The Baez Law Firm

What the firm handles

Criminal defense is the main work of this Florida firm, which runs offices in Miami and Orlando. It represents clients in both state and federal courts. The work also reaches into civil rights and civil litigation, so the caseload is broader than criminal charges alone.

The charges the firm lists cover much of the criminal code. On the more familiar end there is DUI, drug crime, domestic violence, assault and battery, and theft. The heavier matters include sex crimes and homicide. The firm also takes white collar cases such as wire fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering, which usually run for months and turn on paper records.

That spread tells you the firm is comfortable in trial courts of different kinds. A DUI case and a money laundering case move at very different speeds. Handling both means the firm keeps lawyers who can work a fast misdemeanor calendar and a slow federal docket.

How the firm approaches evidence

One thing the firm highlights is independent forensic testing. It sends key material to outside examiners for a separate review. That covers DNA, fingerprints, controlled substance chemistry, digital records, and physical trace evidence.

Forensic evidence often decides a criminal case. In my opinion, having separate analysts read that material can shift how a trial goes, because a jury then hears more than one account of the same sample. This kind of testing usually happens during discovery, the pre-trial stage when both sides exchange lab reports and findings.

Outside labs come with a cost and a timeline, and a defense team has to decide which pieces of evidence are worth re-testing. Focusing that effort on the samples most likely to change a verdict is part of trial strategy.

Where criminal defense meets civil rights

Alongside its criminal work, the firm lists civil rights and civil litigation. These cases run on a different track from a criminal charge. A civil rights claim is usually a lawsuit the client brings, often in federal court, and it seeks money or a court order.

Criminal defense experience tends to help here. A lawyer who has cross-examined police officers in a criminal trial already knows how to test an officer's account of a stop or an arrest. That overlap is one reason some defense firms add civil rights work to the same roster.

The people who make up the team

The firm names five attorneys. Jose A. Baez is the lead trial lawyer. Michelle Medina is the Managing Partner and has been with the firm for more than 15 years, and she graduated Cum Laude from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

Sean Landers studied Political Science at the University of Connecticut and finished his B.A. in 2003. He moved to Orlando for law school at Barry University, graduated in 2007, and began his career that August with the 9th Circuit Public Defender's Office. Kirsten Nelson is a trial attorney whose work spans criminal defense and commercial litigation. Her recent federal fraud trial involved alleged losses above $150 million, and she handled the pre-trial and post-trial motions through sentencing.

Allison Rapetti started at the firm as an intern and then a clerk during her second year of law school. She stayed about a year before an internship at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender's Office. While with the firm she took part in a murder trial in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Several of these lawyers came up through public defender offices, which gives the group courtroom time from early in each career.

What the record shows

Jose Baez is the name most readers will know. He represented Casey Anthony and secured a full acquittal on first-degree murder charges. He later represented Aaron Hernandez, who was acquitted of a double homicide in Boston.

The firm points to other trial results too. Baez obtained acquittals for an Ohio doctor who faced 25 counts of murder, a cardiologist charged with 50 counts of federal health care fraud, and a hedge fund executive tried for investor fraud in Brooklyn federal court. As a reviewer, I read that list as a record built on high-stakes trials that went all the way to a verdict.

An acquittal means a jury or judge found the state did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Trials of that size, with dozens of counts, take weeks and a heavy volume of exhibits. These are the firm's own descriptions of its cases, and the Anthony and Hernandez outcomes are matters of public record.

Offices and access

The firm maintains a presence in two Florida legal markets, Miami and Orlando. It offers initial consultations and states that it is available at any hour. It also provides services in Spanish, which fits a client base as bilingual as South Florida.

The site does not list a founding year, and only a copyright range shows on the pages. What the pages do carry is a defined roster: five named attorneys, two Florida offices, and forensic testing across five kinds of evidence.