Elijah Levitt

Head of Litigation
200 South Andrews Avenue, Suite 100
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301
Telephone: 954.351.7474
Email: elevitt@500law.com

 

Former Miami-Dade County Court Judge Elijah Levitt is a highly skilled trial lawyer who knows how to reach the right answer in a legal dispute. At 500law, Elijah serves as the Head of the Litigation Department. Using the skills he acquired as a judge, an Assistant United States Attorney, and an Assistant State Attorney, Elijah helps public and private clients find solutions to their legal problems.

Based on his extensive experience with civil litigation, Elijah has the skills required to assist clients to litigate their cases for the best chance of winning at trial. Elijah tried over sixty-four jury trials and hundreds of bench trials as a lawyer and presided over sixteen jury trials and hundreds of bench trials as a former judge. As a former judge, Elijah has a keen perspective on how to achieve a positive result for clients.

Elijah also attended the Florida Supreme Court certified forty-hour Circuit Civil and forty-hour Family Mediation Trainings and is ready to help parties resolve their disputes. As a judge for more than four years, Elijah is qualified to preside over arbitrations, mock trials, and settlement conferences.

CAREER

In October of 2022, after resigning from the bench to move to Broward County, Florida for family reasons, Elijah started his own firm and mediation practice. His boutique firm focused on helping individuals achieve justice in their cases.

From June 11, 2018, to September 30, 2022, Elijah served as a Miami-Dade County Court judge in the Civil Division. As a Civil Division County Court Judge, Elijah heard thousands of cases concerning debt collection, consumer safety, personal injury protection insurance, landlord-tenant disputes, breach of contract, homeowner’s insurance disputes, and a myriad of other legal issues. As a former judge and a lawyer, he either tried or presided over more than eighty jury trials and two hundred bench trials.

In June of 2018, Florida Governor Rick Scott appointed Elijah to the county court bench. In August of 2020, Elijah was elected unopposed for a six-year term as a county court judge. The lack of opposition in his campaign demonstrates the support that the legal community gave Elijah.

Prior to becoming a judge, from March 2004 to September 2012, Elijah served as an Assistant State Attorney in the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office. For the last four years of his service, he prosecuted homicides and offenses committed by documented or suspected gang members in the Gang Prosecution Unit. In June 2007 to October 2008, Elijah was selected to serve as a Special Assistant United States Attorney on an assignment designed to prosecute violent felons and gang members for federal firearms and narcotics violations. This highly successful program reduced violent crime in South Florida during his term appointment.

From September 2012 to March 2018, Elijah served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. During his tenure with the United States Attorney’s Office, he prosecuted complex money laundering cases, large-scale narcotics trafficking, and federal financial crimes with the mission to forfeit assets that were involved in federal offenses or that were purchased with the proceeds of those offenses. Of particular note, Elijah was the lead prosecutor in the forfeiture of the largest cash seizure in Miami-Dade Police Department history involving over $24 million in cash seized from a drug dealer’s home.

Elijah also received accolades for his work as a prosecutor. In May 2017, the Daily Business Review awarded Elijah with a Rising Star Award based on peer recognition for being an accomplished South Florida lawyer under the age of forty. In July 2011, Elijah received the Prosecutor of the Quarter Award from the Miami-Dade Association of Chiefs of Police for trying ten cases in a year to successful verdicts.

Elijah joined 500law in 2023 and quickly rose to lead its Litigation Department.

Elijah is licensed to practice law in the State of Florida and in federal court in the United States Southern District of Florida.

EDUCATION

In 2000, Elijah graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, DC with a double major in International Relations and Spanish. During college, from 1998 to 1999, Elijah was selected to be a college exchange student in Madrid, Spain. Due in large part to this exchange program, Elijah became fluent in Spanish. After graduation, from 2000 to 2001, he worked as a litigation paralegal for the Washington, DC office of a New York-based law firm.

In August 2001, Elijah moved to Miami to attend the University of Miami School of Law and obtained his juris doctor in December 2003. During his time in law school, Elijah interned for two Miami-Dade County Judges and worked as a law clerk for a Miami-based law firm. He served as a member of the law school’s Criminal Law Society and Center for Ethics and Public Service and was elected to be a Student Bar Association Senator during his second year of law school. Elijah also worked for a summer as a Certified Legal Intern with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office in the Misdemeanor Crimes Unit.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Elijah is currently a member of the Broward County Bar Association. He has also been a member of the Cuban American Bar Association, The Gwen S. Cherry Black Women Lawyers Association, The League of Prosecutors, and the Federal Bar Association. As a former judge, Elijah made presentations at events sponsored by the Coral Gables Bar Association, the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, the Spellman-Hoeveler American Inn of Court, and the Miami Bar Association.

Elijah also volunteered to assist the trial programs at the Florida International University College of Law and University of Miami School of Law by presiding over their final trials of the school semester.

Elijah is a dedicated supporter of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s.