Mike Tanner is sworn in as president of The Florida Bar at the Bar’s Annual Convention in Orlando while his wife, Dawna Bicknell Tanner, looks on. Tanner said one of the key challenges the profession faces is how to strike a balance between “the way we used to do things 15 months ago, and the way we’re doing them now.” He said meeting those challenges will involve a reexamination and renewed commitment to the profession’s core values, much in the way the Founding Fathers built the American experiment on a foundation of what they knew best.

Eager to move beyond the pandemic and pledging to reexamine and strengthen core values, newly sworn Florida Bar President Michael G. Tanner announced that he intends to pursue professionalism, access-to-justice, and career opportunity related initiatives.

“This is the time when our society has been under stress, when we need a truly robust third branch of government…a truly robust third branch of government,” Tanner said. “And this is a time when we should recommit ourselves to our core principles.”