Professor Chuck Ehrhardt honored with Annual Law Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award

Professor Chuck Ehrhardt honored with Annual Law Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award

Professor Emeritus Charles “Chuck” Ehrhardt has won the 2024 Law Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award. Tampa attorney and former Judge Claudia Isom, a former student, pointed to “Ehrhardt on Evidence,” and “Florida Trial Objections,” as proof that Ehrhardt’s influence stretches far beyond the classroom. “His booming voice, incredible retention of appellate case citations and credibility as the drafter of the Florida Evidence Code make him a legend in the legal profession,” Isom wrote.

FSU College of Law Professor Emeritus Charles “Chuck” Ehrhardt, heralded as a legend by colleagues and former students, is the recipient of the 2024 Law Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award.

Sponsored by the Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism, the award recognizes a faculty member or administrator of a Florida law school who best exemplifies the mission of the Standing Committee on Professionalism.

Ehrhardt’s legion of admirers, including judges, colleagues, and former students, submitted nominations brimming with superlatives.

Twentieth Circuit Judge Margaret Steinbeck said Ehrhardt “embodies the highest ideals of our professionalism and has inspired countless lawyers and judges to strive for them, too.”

Steinbeck noted that Ehrhardt is “mobbed by fans” at judicial conferences and one of the most sought-after professors at Florida’s continuing judicial education programs.

A 1964 University of Iowa Law School graduate, Ehrhardt was named a Ladd Professor of Evidence at FSU Law in 1977, after joining the faculty as an assistant law professor in 1967.

Prior to that, Ehrhardt served two years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Florida.

Tampa attorney Kareem J. Spratling, president-elect of the FSU College of Law Alumni Association, considered Ehrhardt a “somewhat mythical figure” when Spratling, then a 1L, met Ehrhardt in 2003. Getting to know Ehrhardt better over the years didn’t change that impression, Spratling said.

“Outside of the student-professor dynamic, he is perhaps even more engaging and brilliant,” Spratling wrote.

Tampa attorney and former Judge Claudia Isom, a former student, pointed to “Ehrhardt on Evidence,” and “Florida Trial Objections,” as proof that Ehrhardt’s influence stretches far beyond the classroom.

“His booming voice, incredible retention of appellate case citations and credibility as the drafter of the Florida Evidence Code make him a legend in the legal profession,” Isom wrote.

Ehrhardt’s distinct voice, and red suspenders, haunted Tallahassee attorney Samantha Boge’s dreams when he taught her torts in 1972.

“He inspired me to work hard to understand torts,” Boge wrote. “Later, Mr. Ehrhardt taught me Evidence, and he again inspired me to work hard to learn all I could.”

Ehrhardt hasn’t let decades of veneration by students, or his status as an “undisputed expert on Florida Evidence,” go to his head, stressed Tallahassee attorney Terry Lewis, a former Second Judicial Circuit judge. Like other nominators, Lewis noted that Ehrhardt encourages former students and judges to call him, “about Evidence or any subject.”

“And despite his exalted position in the profession and the acclaim he has deservedly received, he remains a humble, down-to-earth person we would all do well to emulate,” Lewis wrote. “I cannot think of a person more deserving of this recognition.”