KARL PANSLER
Southeastern Helped Christian Attorney Develop Ethos for Life and Lawyering

Attorney Karl Pansler admires how Jesus rendered justice: with toughness and compassion. The firm, with offices in Lakeland and Tampa, represents people, or their families, who have suffered injury or death due to someone else’s negligence. Pansler fights for victims of medical malpractice, defective products, nursing home violations and accidents. Pansler, whose work obtained $5.6 million for the family of a tourist killed by a fatigued commercial truck driver, said Southeastern played a big role in his success as a lawyer.

“Southeastern gave me my foundation for life,” said Pansler, a Lakeland, Florida, native who graduated from Southeastern in 1982. “They put me in a position where I could go somewhere.” Pansler said he received some of his most important lessons in history classes taught by Southeastern instructor Don Eudy. Through his study of history, Pansler began to understand that if you don’t learn from past mistakes you’ll repeat them. Pansler applied this lesson professionally, explaining that his law practice has prospered largely because he has learned what he's good at and specializes in it. In addition to Eudy, former English department head chair Dr. James West helped Pansler improve his writing and thinking, skills crucial for law school. Although Pansler majored in history and secondary education, he is pleased about Southeastern’s pre-law track within its criminal justice major. “There’s a need for good Christian attorneys out there,” he said. Pansler believes the new major will successfully prepare students for law school.

After graduating from Southeastern, Pansler attended the O.W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. He practiced law for two years in Oklahoma before returning to Florida to practice.

Pansler follows Christ by choosing between right and wrong as an attorney. A practice that may be legal may not be right, he said. Daily reading of scripture also guides his work. During a recent reading of Jesus’ defense of the woman caught in the act of adultery, Pansler was particularly impressed by how Jesus handled the woman’s accusers. Jesus was unfazed by the men’s demand to know Jesus’ recommendation for fitting punishment. The men probably didn’t like to hear Christ say “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” But they respected his answer, Pansler said, because they left the woman alone. Pansler’s application of a Christian perspective to the law draws a similar mix of grumbling and respect from his legal opponents, Pansler said. “I make decisions on cases based upon what Jesus taught,” said Pansler. “I don't practice law any different than the way I live my life.”

Pansler expects that graduates of the pre-law track of Southeastern’s criminal justice major will carry on the torch of the Godly practice of law. “We have to fight for what we believe in,” Pansler said. “The world fights for what they believe in.”