With animated hands punctuating her speech, Broward County Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren  seems more passionate and forceful than the typical black-robed jurist presiding over a courtroom from an elevated bench.

When she speaks, she still sounds like the woman she was decades ago: the former director of the Office of the Public Guardian, who once traveled across the state to advocate for patients at a psychiatric hospital on the brink of closure.