Meet Chad Piotrowski

Criminal Trial Attorney • Miami • Fort Lauderdale • West Palm Beach • the Keys

Chad Piotrowski used to be the one deciding whether you got charged. Now he is the one making sure you don’t.

He was a prosecutor at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, and eventually a supervising and training attorney in its Domestic Violence Unit — the person teaching other prosecutors how to build a case and take it to a jury. He knows what a file looks like before it becomes a charge: which witnesses the State is quietly worried about, which evidence looks strong in a press release and thin in a deposition, and what makes a prosecutor decide a case is not worth trying. That is not a talking point. It is the reason his cases so often end before a jury is ever seated.

He founded Piotrowski Law in 2010. The firm has offices in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Monroe County, takes state cases in every jurisdiction in Florida, and handles federal cases nationwide.

What That Looks Like in a Real Case

Miami-Dade • Reported by NBC 6

“Defending herself”: Miami Gardens mother justified for killing baby’s father

“She was defending herself because she was being attacked.”

NBC 6’s headline, and Chad’s quote in the story. That is an entire self-defense case in one sentence — said out loud, early, while the public was still reading a homicide arrest.

The Cases That Never Became Cases

The work Chad is proudest of never shows up in a docket search, because there is no docket.

When someone knows they are under investigation — a target letter arrives, agents call, a subpoena lands, a detective asks them to come in and talk — there is a window before any charging decision is made. In that window a lawyer can still get in front of the prosecutor or the agent with the part of the story the investigation has not heard. Chad has spent a great deal of his career in that window, and a significant share of that work has ended with no arrest and no indictment.

Clients in those matters have no verdict to point to and no headline to show anyone. They also have no record, no mugshot, no bond, and nothing to explain to an employer for the rest of their lives. Those are the real wins in this practice, and they are invisible by design.

If you have been contacted by an agent, received a target letter or a subpoena, or been asked to come in for an interview and you have not been arrested — that is the moment to call, not after.

Federal Practice

Chad is admitted in all three federal districts in Florida — Southern, Middle and Northern — and has handled 78 federal cases, including matters in districts around the country. He was appointed to the Criminal Justice Act panel for the Southern District of Florida, the roster of attorneys the federal court itself trusts to defend people who cannot afford counsel. The appointment requires an application, a vetting process, a vote of the panel and the approval of federal judges. His was unanimous.

Federal cases are not usually won by a speech. They are won in writing, months before anyone stands up.

He knows what a winning motion looks like from inside a judge’s chambers. That is where he began his career, researching and writing for federal judges. Chad clerked in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for the Honorable Jacob P. Hart and the Honorable Linda K. Caracappa. An order issues over the judge’s signature, but it is researched and drafted in chambers. Chad was the one drafting it.

So a motion from him is aimed at both chairs. The judge gets the argument. The clerk gets the record already cited, the case law already run down, and the reasoning already in the shape an order has to take.

Standing in the Defense Bar

Chad is in his eighth year on the Board of Directors of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Miami Chapter — an elected seat, voted on by the other defense lawyers in the county. It is not a credential you can buy or apply for. It is the defense bar in this county deciding, election after election, that he should be one of the people speaking for it.

The lawyers who vote for him are the same ones who see his work from across the aisle and in the same courthouses every week. That is a harder audience than any directory or ranking.

And the Cases the Whole World Watched

The work above is invisible on purpose. The other half of this practice is the opposite: cases that ran on the front page while they were still being fought.

Chad’s cases have been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the Associated Press, ESPN, Fox News, the Miami Herald, NBC 6, Local 10 and WSVN, and in the Italian and Australian press. Reporters covering South Florida courts also call him for analysis on cases he has nothing to do with.

A client does not care about press. But a lawyer who has tried a case with a camera in the hallway and a reporter calling the office every afternoon knows how to keep that noise from becoming a second problem for the client — what to say, what never to say, and when saying nothing at all is the strategy.

See the full coverage →

Credentials, Education and Recognition

• Best Law Firm, Miami Herald Miami-Dade Favorites, 2023 — Piotrowski Law
• “Best of Miami,” Miami New Times Readers’ Poll — Best Law Firm, 2024, 2025 and 2026
• Former Assistant State Attorney, Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office — supervising and training attorney, Domestic Violence Unit
• Board of Directors, Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers — Miami Chapter (eighth year, elected)
• Admitted in the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida
• Criminal Justice Act Panel Attorney, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (unanimous appointment)
• Former federal judicial clerk, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania — Hon. Jacob P. Hart and Hon. Linda K. Caracappa
• Forfeiture Unit, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office
• Juvenile and Appellate Unit, Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office
• J.D., Widener University School of Law, Wilmington, Delaware, 2006
• B.A., Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2001

If It Is Your Turn

Nobody plans for this. The call comes on a Tuesday afternoon, or the knock comes at six in the morning, and everything after it is unfamiliar territory — except to the people on the other side of it, who do this every day.

What you want in that moment is not someone learning your case at the same speed you are. You want the lawyer who has already stood in that courtroom, already read a file like yours from the prosecutor’s desk, and already knows what the next ninety days are going to look like.

That is the firm voted Best Law Firm in the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade Favorites, and Best of Miami by Miami New Times readers.

If you have been arrested, charged, or contacted by law enforcement, call (305) 204-5000. The consultation is confidential.

Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future matter. Every case depends on its own facts.