Litigation partner Sowmya Bharathi in Fort Lauderdale was inducted into the invitation-only trial lawyer honor society, Litigation Counsel of America (LCA), as a Fellow during its 2022 Fall Conference & Celebration of Fellows, which was held in San Diego from October 12-14.

LCA Fellows are invited to join the society “after being evaluated for effectiveness and accomplishment in litigation and trial work, along with ethical reputation.” The selection process combines internal research, nominations by other Fellows, input from active and retired judges, reviews of acknowledgement, and recognition by other peer reviewing sources and associations, among other things. Membership in LCA is limited to 3,500 Fellows, a number that represents less than one-half of one percent of American lawyers.

Sowmya is a first-chair trial lawyer with extensive federal court experience. She has tried 24 federal cases to jury verdict, many of them involving cutting-edge matters of statutory interpretation and constitutional issues. Through strategic planning and aggressive pretrial litigation, Sowmya has won several court-ordered dismissals of charges mid-trial, as well as government dismissals of six indicted cases pretrial. Sowmya has also written more than 20 federal appeals, including an en banc matter, and has argued before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She has secured wins in the Eleventh Circuit, including a case that she litigated starting from a bench trial through authoring the appellate briefing that triggered a reversal on the papers.

Sowmya and her Akerman team represent a national franchisor in premises liability cases across Florida involving alleged sexual assaults, an energy company and national insurance companies in a range of business disputes, as well as automobile part manufacturers, airplane manufacturers, and a variety of other industries.