Meet Wellington’s Three Counsel On The Council

Trio Of Attorneys Now Represent Wellington Residents On The Dais

Story by Julie Unger

Photos by Abner Pedraza (?)

The Wellington Village Council has included lawyers before, but one of the striking differences about the new council seated after the March election is that three members — a majority — are attorneys. Councilmen John McGovern, Michael Drahos and Michael Napoleone are the counsel on the council.

McGovern is a trial lawyer, or litigator, who represents people injured by the negligence of someone else, be it an individual or a corporation.

He earned his law degree at the University of Florida in 1999 and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2000. McGovern is a managing partner at McGovern Gerardi Law P.A., while balancing life as husband to wife Michelle and father to daughters Emilia, 10, and Victoria, 8.

McGovern anticipates more brief, succinct council meetings in the coming years with three lawyers sitting on the dais. He believes that it will provide a benefit to residents to have three individuals, who just happen to be lawyers, working for the good of one client — the community of Wellington.

“Wellington has a village attorney,” McGovern said. “Another challenge of having three lawyers on the council is we are not Wellington’s lawyer. We are not here practicing law. That’s not our job, and that’s one of the things, since being appointed a year ago, that I’ve worked very hard on.”

He is always quick to remember his role on the dais. “In dealing with the village attorney, I’m the client, not the lawyer,” he said.

The job of the council, McGovern explained, is to safeguard what is best for the future of Wellington and its residents.

As a father, McGovern explained that striving to do the right things for the right reasons becomes even more important as his daughters learn more about his occupation and position on the council. “There’s nothing harder than trying to explain a decision at the dinner table at your own house,” he said.

But he can’t imagine doing anything else, given his healthy respect and curiosity about the law.

“Through the law, even the largest of problems can be resolved in a fair and equitable way, such that an individual, a community, a neighborhood, can get a result though an orderly process, and I think that’s what the law is,” McGovern said. “It’s a way to solve problems.”

Drahos found law to be his calling when he was in eighth grade and saw the movie A Few Good Men.

“There was something about that movie, and the dramatic nature of courtroom cases and watching them unfold, I was drawn to that immediately,” he said. “Ever since I was young, it’s a profession that I found to be admirable and one that could do a lot of good in people’s lives. I’ve found it to be exactly as I expected, which is rare. I consider myself really fortunate.”

Drahos specializes in civil defense, where he defends corporations and other clients in large-exposure personal injury cases, focusing mostly on maritime medical malpractice, as well as liability.

“Any type of product, from roller coasters to bicycles to basketball hoops to automotive component parts to agricultural parts, I handle them all,” he said.

Drahos graduated from Florida State University in 1999 with an English degree before attending Nova Southeastern University for law school, graduating in 2002. He has spent his entire legal career with Fowler White Burnett P.A.

He predicts that council meetings will flow more efficiently with a more professional tone.

“We, as lawyers, are trained to be adversarial on behalf of our clients, but most good lawyers are able to know, when the job is over, you don’t take it outside of the courtroom,” Drahos said. “I believe this will translate well into this council, because we are inevitably going to have debate up there over what we feel is best for Wellington, but when that debate is over, we’ll be able to move on to the next issue without carrying baggage. That is exactly what Wellington needs.”

He believes that having the three lawyers on the council will help to ensure that decisions are carefully thought through. “You don’t need to be a lawyer to know when a good deal is good and when a bad deal is bad,” Drahos said.

Lawyers tend to look at things differently because of their experiences, he said.

“We’re trained to think two, three, four, five steps ahead,” Drahos said. “I think the decisions that we’ll make… will be beneficial today, but also calculated to be beneficial tomorrow and into the future, because that’s the way we’re trained to think.”

For Drahos, working to better Wellington includes safeguarding his family, including his wife, Nathalie, and daughters Julia, 8, and Sophia, 6.

“I want to make them proud,” he said. “Julia has really taken this in, and I think has an appreciation for what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and that makes me extremely proud.”

As an attorney, Drahos is honored to serve on the council.

“The legal profession and public service has always been sort of a natural fit,” he said. “I don’t find it surprising that there are three of us now on this council, but what I do expect is that we are going to honor our profession and our community in a way that is going to make everybody proud.”

Napoleone works at Richman Greer P.A. representing corporations and individuals in the field of business and contract negotiation. He attended the University of Florida, studying criminology and psychology, before attending law school at St. John’s University in New York.

The legal field appealed to Napoleone, who enjoys the intellectual challenge of solving a problem. He believes that having three lawyers on the council is an advantage.

“Our training is designed to teach us to analyze an issue from all sides and ask the right questions to get the information you need to make a decision,” he said. “From that standpoint, I think it’s a benefit, because you have people who have a day-to-day job that is to probe into an issue and ask good questions… and that’s really what the council’s job is.”

Letting staff do its job, and bringing in experts regarding fields where the council members themselves are not experts, is important. That will allow the experts to do what needs to be done to run the village, Napoleone said.

“I’m hoping that we can disagree without being disagreeable,” he said. “We do different things, but we generally are in court a lot. When you do that, you learn that you can’t take things personally. You can’t personalize your client’s issue… When I’m in court with another lawyer and we’re arguing before the judge, it’s never personal.”

Going out for coffee or lunch after a session in court isn’t uncommon, he said.

“We don’t personalize and carry that argument over to our actual lives, and I think that’s what you have to do on the council,” Napoleone said. You can’t make everything personal. It’s not one councilperson versus another. We may disagree on an issue, but we must respect that person’s point of view. Disagreements and arguments and having good debate are all good things, as long as you can recognize at the end of the day that we’re all in this together.”

Napoleone has worked on numerous boards in the past and has noticed that lawyers have a tendency to ask more questions in the path of making a decision, and do well with the additional reading necessary as a council member, since they already read tremendous amounts of material as counselors. “We’re prepared to be prepared,” he said.

Napoleone’s family has been supportive and eager to learn about his new position. Wife Cyndi and sons Christopher, 10, and Luca, 2, like the idea that he’s working to make a difference in Wellington.