“I think that put a fire under him,’’ she said. “There was a lot of emotion attached to loss and grief.’’

Spence connected with juries through his folksy tone and plain speaking, Masington said. “Juries saw him as a regular guy wearing a suit. He never believed he was as good as he was.’’

Stanley Rosenblatt, another top-tier Miami personal injury lawyer, who collaborated with Spence over the years, called him “the genuine article. He was a great talent who cared deeply about the misfortunes his clients had endured, and his identification with them was conveyed to jurors simply by the way he conducted himself.’’

Martha Spence said that her father was still going to office several days a week before he was admitted to Doctors Hospital with a high fever in mid-November. The family is still awaiting a ruling on his cause of death.

“He did a lot of pro bono work for waitresses and waiters the last few years’’ with The Cochran Firm, she said. In 2006, Cochran absorbed Leeds Colby Paris Spence Hoffman & Valori, the final firm to include the Spence name.

Spence stayed active with the Rotary Club, hung out at Bob’s Burgers just off the Grenada Golf Course in the Gables, and “bought lots of books at Books & Books,’’ his daughter said.

He is survived by sons Mark Spence and Gary Spence, of Miami, and John Spence, of Gainesville.

A celebration of his life will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church of Coral Gables.

Buddy Payne was less well known than Spence but equally admired. He lived in Dade City, where he died from complications of hip surgery.

Born on March 16, 1936, in Elizabeth City, N.C., Payne played football for the University of North Carolina, then briefly with the Canadian Football League. He earned a law degree from Stetson University.

He was founding president of the Miami-Dade Justice Association (formerly the Dade County Trial Lawyers Association), and in 1994 was named in the sixth edition of The Best Lawyers in America. “Usually it’s my partner, Spence, who gets the high profile,’’ he quipped afterward.

By then, the original firm had evolved into Spence, Payne, Masington, [Andrew] Needle & [Scott] Leeds.

Among Payne’s headline-making cases: two men injured in a 1990 Punta Gorda nightclub pyrotechnic-show explosion. Payne settled out of court and called the award to one man, who lost a leg, “very substantial.’’

The previous year, Payne won $6 million for a construction worker who also lost a leg while building the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge.

Payne is survived by his wife of four years, Gloria Elwell Payne, children Darrell Payne and Clinton Payne, Preston Scanlon and Darby Plummer, and 15 grandchildren. Friends gathered Wednesday evening to remember him at a private home. He didn’t want a funeral.

Both men gained unwanted notoriety in their personal lives in the 1990s, Spence for assaulting his third, eventual ex-wife — the charges were dropped — and Payne for being shot and nearly killed by an unstable girlfriend.

He retired from the law in 1997 on disability and joined a trial-consulting firm.