Judge Meshon T. Rawls: Professional Background and Legal Expertise

The Hon. Meshon T. Rawls is a judge for the Alachua County Court in the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida. She was elected to the bench in 2018.

Rawls has presided over the County Civil Division IV and Civil Traffic.

Prior to her election, Rawls was a legal skills professor and the director of the Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic at the University of Florida, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, having held the positions since 2006. Before that, she worked for seven years as an assistant public defender with the Office of the Public Defender for the Eighth Judicial Circuit (1998 to 2005).

She received a B.A. in criminology from the University of Florida in 1993. Rawls went on to complete a J.D. at the University of Florida, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, in 1998. While a law student, she interned with the Florida Association for Community Action (1996) and the Virgil Hawkins Criminal Clinic (1995) and was a law clerk in the Law Offices of Williams & Associates, P.A. (1997).

She was admitted to practice in Florida in 1999.

Her memberships have included the James C. Adkins, Jr. Inn of Court, the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association, the Eighth Judicial Circuit Bar Association, and the American Bar Association.

Rawls has sat as a member of the Alachua County Juvenile Justice Council; the Black on Black Crime Task Force; the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission of Alachua County, Inc.; the Project Turnaround Advisory Board; the Federally Qualified Health Center Board; the Florida Supreme Court Steering Committee on Families and Children in the Courts; and the Bench Bar Committee, Grievance Committee, Juvenile Justice Council, and Professionalism Panel of the Eighth Judicial Circuit.

With the Florida Bar, she served on the Juvenile Law Board of Certification Committee, the Legal Needs of Children Committee, the Public Interest Law Section, and the Voluntary Bar Liaison Committee. Rawls was also a member of the Florida Bar Leadership Academy, Class II. In addition, she was site coordinator for the Neighborhood Accountability Board of the Community Outreach and Development Center of Alachua County.

Rawls was born in Miami, Florida. She has been an active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.