Polk Law Blog

About me

I am Kemp Brinson, an attorney with Clark, Campbell, Mawhinney & Lancaster, P.A. in Lakeland, Florida. My practice is focused in civil litigation, with an emphasis on employment law, commercial matters, real estate, and contested probate. My firm provides services to businesses and individuals in a variety of business, real estate, land use, estate planning, probate, and tax matters. I live in Winter Haven and participate in a variety of community endeavors, mostly in Winter Haven but sometimes in Lakeland, too.

I can be reached professionally at kbrinson@ccmattorneys.com.

About this blog

Although my practice focuses on commercial litigation (things like employment matters, fights over real estate and business contracts, and that sort of thing), I am passionate about the law in other areas. A lot of lawyers use blogs to promote their practices. Polk Law Blog is different. I use it as a way to help the public understand legal issues affecting our area.

One of my goals here is to be as objective as I possibly can. If I blogged within my practice areas, it would be extremely difficult for me to be objective. I would find myself taking positions adverse to my clients, which is an ethical no-no, or compromising my objectivity for my clients’ benefit, something I want to avoid in this particular forum. Thus, it’s less problematic to stick to matters that my clients aren’t involved in.

I generally focus on legal issues that concern Polk County, Florida in some way – either because they originated here or uniquely affect us. My goal is to make complex legal issues accessible to lay readers without dumbing them down.

Unlike the traditional media, I do not have to rely on what other lawyers say in my stories. Reporters, in contrast, don’t have the background to do legal analysis. They have to find attorneys willing to comment and then quote them. Often, those attorneys are involved in the cases reported or have an inherent bias because they tend to represent clients only on one particular side of the issue. Other times, they are “experts” from out of town that lack specific knowledge of the situation. I try to offer a different perspective. I am typically not an expert in the fields I cover, but I look into them thoroughly and include citations to sources so that the topic is fairly and accurately addressed.

I spend quite a bit of time on each post and I try to make them absolutely correct. But I do not spend the same amount of time or energy that I would spend if I were working for a client or working within my particular areas of expertise. The point is not to lay out an end-all be-all analysis, but to take an intelligent look at things, point to the original sources for further study, and then open it up for comments if others have a different point of view.

I’m sure other lawyers, like me, often get questions from friends and family asking them to explain the context behind legal issues reported in the press. This space is intended replicate those sorts of conversations.

I appreciate and value all posted comments, private feedback, and suggestions for topics for posts. Thanks for reading.