May 2007

Our chief moves on

With Executive Director Jan Michels as guide, WSBA successes accrue

by Lindsay Thompson

WSBA's executive director, Jan Michels, retires this month after nine years running our affairs. She moved up the street from King County Superior Court, where she was administrator. Succeeding Jan will be her able deputy, Paula Littlewood, who will doubtless hit the ground running.

During her first three years on the job, I was one of Jan's nominal bosses as a member of the WSBA Board of Governors. She was an effective and efficient manager of the Board's operations, somehow getting our 500-page briefing books to us on time, and getting all the people and groups appearing at meetings to their places in the right timeslots. She quickly mastered the deep mysteries of WSBA lore, like how it gets decided which governors would never be scheduled to speak during meetings with the Supreme Court.

If you do a stint in bar leadership, especially if you are in the Seattle area, you get lots of invitations to events. A lot of the time it seems like they just want someone with "WSBA" stamped on their foreheads, but Jan took to the chicken-and-salmon circuit with a will and a smile. She not only showed up for a birthday brunch I threw myself in 2000 but lugged along her husband.

Jan revealed other manifestations of attention to detail along the way. My class of the BOG ended our terms a couple of days after 9/11, in a week of confusion and mourning. Jan went ahead and presented each of us with a framed caricature of our class as a band conducted by our last president, Jan Eric Peterson. I appear, bow tie impeccably tied, playing a cross between a sousaphone and a geoduck.

Sixteen months later, I was one of Jan's nominal employees as Bar News editor. Since the editor is an independent contractor, and since I try to avoid meetings of every sort, we didn't cross paths much. But there was a lot going on at WSBA. Most notably, Jan ushered the office (which, in the 1990s, got a fax machine, but didn't like giving out the number lest people fax them things at night) into the technology age with systems to manage CLE credits, membership data, and a comprehensive website. She made the hard call to develop custom software for these tasks rather than continue with bolted-together off-the-shelf stuff ill-suited to the purpose. WSBA's Service Center was a response to member complaints that they feared they would die on hold; now calls are swiftly shot to the right place. WSBA's long-moribund Foundation was revived. WSBA's relations with the courts is strong and productive. Significant initiatives addressed and staffed include coming issues like legal services and diversity. Long-range planning replaced the old "theme of the year" model.

Jan showed particular aplomb dealing with some one-off problems. One was when the building WSBA officed in got sick, and so did WSBA staffers. Soon the afflicted were scattered all over the tower in temp space; the problem took a long time to sort out, but eventually the bug in the air was vanquished.

Which led, in part, to the next big challenge: moving the WSBA to new space. She and her staff managed a huge move over a weekend last December. The new offices in Puget Sound Plaza are well laid-out, and have none of the rats-in-a-maze feel of the old offices.

Doubtless there's more that Jan accomplished, things I've forgotten or didn't know in the first place. But there's no denying she has been a highly effective administrator these past nine years. I tip my hat, in addition to the more formal accolades she will receive from others, and wish Jan and Alan well in a retirement I am sure will be replete with travel, biking, and skiing. And, come 2010, I am sure — with their flat at Whistler, smack in the middle of the Winter Olympics — Jan and Alan will be amazed just how many fabulous friends and admirers they really had all this time, all of us eager to drop in for a visit. 

Lindsay Thompson reports from Port Angeles and can be reached at barnewseditor@wsba.org.