Stefan Barber
Stefan Barber joined the Joshi Law Firm in 2024 having spent his entire legal career as a criminal defense attorney. He is a keen legal mind and a compassionate, fierce, and zealous advocate for his clients regardless of the allegations against them. He believes that the prosecution’s case must always be attacked in every way possible, whether through trial, stand your ground motions, suppression motions, and/or dismissal motions. He previously worked for over eight years with the 18th Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office in Seminole County where he honed his lawyering skills handling all manners of post-conviction, appellate, felony, misdemeanor, and violation of probation cases. His experience spans from Capital Murder and Sexual Battery charges all the way down to DUI, petit theft, and trespass charges. During his tenure there, he was twice recognized as the lawyer who went to trial the most in a calendar year, and he helped mentor numerous new hires on Florida criminal law, evidence, and procedure.
He graduated from the Florida State University School of Law with honors. While a law student, he interned with the Innocence Project of Florida handling post-conviction cases, as well as with the 2nd Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office handling appellate and felony trial cases. He served as a senior member of the Florida State University Law Review and as an article selection editor for the Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law. He was a teaching assistant for the Appellate Advocacy and Legal Research and Writing I & II classes. He also earned book awards in his Post-Conviction Remedies and Juvenile Law classes.
Before relocating to Florida for law school, he lived in West Virginia, where he spent three years working as a Board of Education licensed Adult Educator teaching E.S.L. and G.E.D. classes in Charleston. He also served one year as an AmeriCorps*VISTA where he did educational curriculum development for a K-6 afterschool program in the town of Kermit.
He completed his undergraduate studies in his native state at Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College where he graduated with honors earning a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in History. He was the chairman of the board of directors of the Center for Student Legal Services, which provided low-cost criminal defense services to university students accused of crimes. He was a research scholar at the George C. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs where he studied public policy outcomes in the local Appalachian Region. And he was the founding president of the Phi Sigma Pi Co-Ed National Honors Fraternity—Epsilon Iota Chapter, where he is the epononym of the “Stefan D. Barber Excellence in Service Award,” given annually to the brother who demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to the organization.
