Anne Longman co-founded a law firm built on respect

In the early days, more than 30 years ago, Anne Longman and a half-dozen other lawyers brainstormed about the firm they wanted to create. Their experiences at a Tallahassee law firm left them feeling as if there had to be something more.

The result is Lewis, Longman & Walker, P.A. (LLW), a prominent environmental law firm with offices around the state. Longman’s co-founders say that the vision to which Longman contributed heavily was to hire colleagues who shared their vision and a spirit of cooperation.

Longman, an appellate specialist whose exhaustive preparation helped her clients win, died on May 1 due to complications from heart surgery. She was 76.

“She was very thorough, very intentional,” said Robert Diffenderfer, a founding shareholder. “She was the kind of person you wanted on your team.”

The firm handles a wide range of environmental issues, often for governments and around land use. Like other successful law firms, LLW’s lawyers could work late into the night on cases and hungered for successful outcomes. Unlike some high-pressure firms, LLW looked to hire with care and cultivate camaraderie.

“She was not someone who just jumped in and dominated the conversation,” said Stephen Walker. “She listened to the arguments and then said what she thought.”

Longman was born on April 16, 1949, and grew up in Lake Worth, Florida. She graduated magna cum laude from Mercer University and then earned a master’s degree in literature at the University of North Carolina. Ultimately, said daughter Alexis Lambert, “The separation between academia and the world was not going to work for her.”

Uncertain about her next step, she settled on law school. “I think it was partly because she couldn’t figure out what to do next,” said Lambert, who in November was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to be the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. “And I think she thought it would be a challenge, which she loved.”

She met Peter Antonacci at Florida State University’s law school, who was more talkative than she was. They enjoyed their conversations so much that they married and began legal careers in Tallahassee.

Retired founding shareholder Steve Lewis recalls a story about the kind of legal prowess that built her reputation. The firm was defending a marina in the Keys that had already lost once in a dispute over boat slips. Longman was seven months pregnant when she handled the appeal.

Lewis, who was in court as she methodically deconstructed the other side’s case, was amazed by what he saw.

“I am sitting here looking at the other side,” he said. “I’m watching the judges as they’re nodding their heads as she’s laying out critical points, and I’m thinking, ‘You guys are going to get killed.’”

She made it easier for other women to have successful careers without sacrificing home life. “She was doing work-life balance before work-life balance was a thing that anybody said,” said daughter Claudia Hadjigeorgiou, also a lawyer.

She preached hard work and humility, Hadjigeorgiou said – to “knock yourself off center stage” and learn the other person’s perspective.

Colleagues heard the same message. “What I learned from her,” Walker said, “was that being patient and considerate was a more effective way to be a lawyer than to just pretend like you knew it all.”

Hadjigeorgiou said her husband died three years ago. Longman continued to nourish her passion for good conversation and remained an active member of a women’s book group for 40 years. She had recently talked about missing Antonacci.

“She and my dad were intellectual equals and true partners,” she said. “And they shared their love of just talking about things. And she loved it. She was a dilettante; she was interested in everything.”