Fred Levin

Who is Fred Levin?

Fredric Gerson Levin is a highly controversial American plaintiffs’ attorney in the state of Florida, who serves as chairman of Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty & Proctor, P.A, a law firm in Northwest Florida. The Fredric G. Levin College of Law at the University of Florida is named for him because of a $10 million cash donation he made to the school in 1999, which naming drew statewide attention because of the vehement criticism of having the state’s prestigious law school named after a person who many thought to be reprehensible and undeserving.

One letter to the then dean of the law school read: "I have no problem with naming the law school in honor of an appropriate person, as other colleges have done, but naming our college after Fred Levin does no honor to him, to the institution, or its constituency, and demeans the efforts of the many deans, faculty, and alumni who have worked for so many years to achieve the vision of making our college one of the top twenty law schools. . . . You degraded the image and prestige of the University of Florida College of Law by selling its good name to Fred Levin, a lawyer who has been castigated by the courts for abusing the rules, and is notorious for commercializing the practice, thumbing his nose at the bar, and otherwise manipulating the system." In response, Levin told the press: "It makes me feel great, when their great-grandchildren go up to that stage to get the law degree, they'll know that, dadgum it, that Jew's name is up there on the damn diploma. It's just gotta eat at them."