New Brightline discount aims to ease travel for Bar members
Florida Bar members are eligible for 20% off Brightline Trains SMART fares and 10% off PREMIUM fares when traveling to and from Orlando, Mondays through Fridays, through December 31
A new Brightline Trains discount for Florida Bar members will make it easier for lawyers to spend more time on clients and cases, and less of it stuck in I-95’s bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Miami attorney Michele Morgan, Universal Property & Casualty’s general counsel for operations, couldn’t be happier.
“I am never going to drive to Orlando again,” she vows.
Florida Bar members are eligible for 20% off Brightline Trains SMART fares and 10% off PREMIUM fares when traveling to and from Orlando, Mondays through Fridays, through December 31, 2026.
“Brightline gets you all the top destinations between Miami and Orlando — with stops in Aventura, Ft. Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and West Palm Beach,” sponsors note. More details are available here.
Florida Bar President Rosalyn Sia Baker-Barnes recruited Morgan last year to chair a newly formed Corporate Counsel Committee.
Committee members, Morgan’s workmates, and her colleagues in the South Florida legal community have been eagerly anticipating the new discount. Morgan says it will make travel more affordable, less time-consuming, and easier for her to attend Florida Bar Board of Governors meetings and voluntary bar events in the Central Florida area. More importantly, Morgan says, train travel gives lawyers an advantage that driving tends to negate.
“Obviously, you prepare days ahead for your court events,” she said. “But the few hours right before you step into the courtroom are the hours where you’re really integrating those last little details, so you can just conveniently and productively get that done on the train.”
Morgan credits Dania attorney Danielle Anders, a founding committee member and former Brightline assistant general counsel, with facilitating the agreement with the Bar.
“She’s always played an active role in the committee and worked hard to get Brightline’s support,” Morgan said.
Anders has since left Brightline for another corporate opportunity, but she helped recruit Lisa Gatchell to the committee. Gatchell is Brightline’s vice president for risk management and associate general counsel.
Gatchell recently appeared with Baker-Barnes on the “A Seat at the Table with Sia” podcast. They discussed Gatchell’s corporate responsibilities, the Corporate Counsel Committee, and the new Brightline initiative.
“It’s a position that’s an intersection between legal and business,” Gatchell says. “At the end of the day, my job is to make sure that all of those decisions are not only legally compliant, but in line with safety and security.”
See the podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ojyEc3-Nc.