For the better part of two decades, no one has been more closely identified with the King County Bar Association or more exemplified its mission than Executive Director Alice Paine. And no one is more deserving of recognition by the King County Bar Association and the lawyers of King County than Alice Paine. Alice is the 2007 recipient of the Helen M. Geisness Award for exemplary distinguished service on behalf of the King County Bar Association, and rightfully so.
Throughout her tenure, Alice has served the KCBA with unsurpassed loyalty, dedication, skill and boundless energy. In 1987, Alice was retained as a consultant to assist the KCBA with organizational and management issues that required attention, and she performed her assignment impressively. When, a short time later, the association was searching for a new executive director, Alice was the natural choice. Now in her 19th year of superb service to the bar and on the verge of retirement, Alice has been nothing less than a model administrator.
Alice has helped transform the KCBA into a well-managed professional association. The staff is well-trained and highly motivated. The physical plant and equipment are modern. The KCBA has a strong voice in the legal community and the community at large, with a variety of programs and activities that are the envy of much larger organizations. Under Alice’s capable leadership, the association has won more than 15 national, state and local awards for its various programs. Much of the bar’s success over the past 20 years is due to Alice Paine.
For her work, Alice will not only receive the Helen M. Geisness Award at the KCBA’s annual meeting, but she is the recipient of other awards as well, most recently the President’s Award from Washington Women Lawyers. She will receive this award at the WWL’s annual Judicial Appreciation Luncheon on June 13.
There is tremendous affection and respect for Alice among the thousands of lawyers who have worked with her over the years. Anyone who has worked with Alice knows her qualities well, but few better than bar leaders. Former KCBA President Fred Noland (2000–01) has referred to Alice’s “warmth, grace and tact” and her “complete humility and lack of ego involvement.” Former KCBA President Linda Strout (1998–99) describes Alice as being “smart, savvy and stylish, but never elitist” and says she is “a wonderful role model for career women.” Wayne Blair, KCBA president from 1987–88, comments that Alice is “a warm, endearing person.” And former KCBA President Scott Smith (1996–97) has volunteered that “hiring Alice was one of the best decisions the bar ever made.”
Alice was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her father was a meat-cutter and her mother maintained the books for the store and the household. She graduated from the University of Michigan as a zoology major and later obtained an MBA from City University. She is married and has three daughters and five grandchildren, ages 15 to 21.
Alice’s involvement with the King County Bar Association continued a life-long emphasis on public service and advancing the common good. From 1969 through 1980, Alice was the director of the Community Affairs Program of the American Friends Service Committee Northwest Regional Office. For the AFSC, a Quaker social action organization, Alice researched issues of racial discrimination in the construction industry, proposed and found funding for the United Construction Workers Association to help affected minorities address the issue, hired a community organizer, established the program, got it funded, and later spun it off to independent status. Alice, working with volunteers, developed similar community empowerment programs in the areas of housing, employment and prison conditions.
From 1980 to 1988, Alice was the director of community cooperative for Group Health Cooperative, which for many decades has been the largest consumer-governed health cooperative in Washington. Alice’s work before joining the KCBA, like her work here, is consistent with what Strout describes as Alice’s “passion for community service and improving access to justice for all community residents.”
From 1989 to the present, Alice has graced the KCBA and the King County Bar Foundation as executive director, managing a dedicated staff of some 40 employees, developing and administering a budget of more than $3 million, and in every sense leading a professional association of some 6,000 attorney members. Alice will be a very tough act to follow.
