Robert Rivas

Robert Rivas is a Principal in the Tallahassee office of Sachs Sax Caplan, P.L.  Previously Mr. Rivas had a career as an award-winning reporter and editor for major newspapers before he entered law school in 1988.  He made Law Review and graduated summa cum laude from Nova Law Center in 1991.

Mr. Rivas has a diverse practice in general civil trial and appellate litigation.  He tends to concentrate on media law, providing prepublication counseling and representing clients in defamation, Sunshine Law, public records and government ethics matters, including civil and administrative litigation, and the representation of non-media clients in the same types of issues.  He also handles federal and state civil rights cases, particularly those based on the First Amendment.

Because of Mr. Rivas’s exceptional writing ability, his appellate cases make up the fastest growing aspect of his practice. Certified by the Florida Bar as an expert in appeals, he is the chairman of Sachs Sax Caplan’s appellate law group. His name appears in the headnotes as counsel for parties in dozens of diverse appellate court rulings available on Westlaw or Lexis.

Mr. Rivas was the recipient of the Florida Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award in 1998 for serving as lead trial and appellate counsel for the plaintiffs in McIver v. Krischer, a landmark right-to-die case.

More recently, he secured rulings from the Supreme Court of Georgia and the Court of Appeals of Minnesota striking down each one of those states’ statutes as unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

Details of these case and others are included in the attached list of Robert Rivas’s Reported Cases. As General Counsel to one of the nation’s leading right-to-die advocacy groups, Final Exit Network, he handles its litigation all across the country.