Cuban lawyers program.

The Florida Bar and the University of Florida College of Law appear to have a selective memory about the program established in 1973 to give Cuban-American lawyers the opportunity to take a refresher course to enable them to become lawyers in the Sunshine State.

The celebrants appear to suggest that the program was largely a success, despite some obstacles. Further, the suggestion is made that Cuban-American lawyers generally appreciated the effort.

True, it is admitted in the account that some of the 324 foreign-trained lawyers and judges, most all Cuban, did not graduate from the program. Some exiles dropped out because of their age, or health, or economic circumstances, but "all of us came to participate in a program that gave us a sense of being free," according to one of the successful participants, Jose "Pepe" Villalobos.

But the subsequent history of the program and its participants in the 1970s suggests very different outcomes. On December 15, 1975, the Boca Raton News reported that "Cuban lawyers do poorly in the course."

Only five of 35 lawyers from the University of Florida cram course passed the bar. A retraining program at the University of Miami reported 21 of 40 passed.

If that effort had been a success, the Bar and the law school would be justified in their present day self-congratulations. But three years later, in December 1978, the St. Petersburg Times reported that 62 of the 200 Cuban-Americans in the UF program were suing because they had been denied law degrees, although they claimed to have completed course work equivalent to that given to the regular law student population. They wanted their degrees and $6 million in compensatory damages. They claimed UF...