FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE       
September 11, 2006      
        
Contact Judith Berrett
Director of Member and Community Relations
206-727-8212; judithb@wsba.org

Seattle University School of Law Professors David Boerner and Paula Lustbader Receive 2006 WSBA Excellence in Diversity Award; Law School's Alternative Admissions Program and Academic Resource Center Also Honored

Seattle, Washington, September 11, 2006 — The Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) announces that Seattle University School of Law Professors David Boerner and Paula Lustbader, along with the law school's Alternative Admissions Program and Academic Resource Center — which they co-founded — will be honored with the 2006 Excellence in Diversity Award, presented to a lawyer, law firm, or law-related group that has made a significant contribution to diversity in the legal profession's employment of ethnic minorities, women, and persons with disabilities. 2005-2006 WSBA President S. Brooke Taylor will present the awards at the WSBA Annual Awards Dinner, to be held on September 1, 2006, at the Madison Renaissance Hotel in Seattle. Seattle University School of Law Dean Kellye Testy will accept the award on behalf of the Alternative Admissions Program and Academic Resource Center.

Through their tireless work with the Alternative Admissions Program and Academic Resource Center, Professors Boerner and Lustbader have not only made a significant contribution to diversity in the legal profession, they have helped change the very way law schools view diversity and the need for it.

Professor David Boerner

Professor Boerner has been an associate professor of law at the Seattle University School of Law since 1987. From 1981 to 1987, he was associate dean and an associate professor of law at the University of Puget Sound School of Law. For 10 years prior to embarking on a teaching career, he was chief criminal deputy prosecuting attorney for King County. From 1967 to 1970 he was assistant attorney general for the state of Washington, and from 1965 to 1967 assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington. Prior to that he spent two years in private practice as an associate with Johnson, Jonson and Inslee in Seattle.

Professor Boerner currently serves as chair of the Washington Sentencing Guidelines Commission. He has served on Washington State Supreme Court's Board for Court Education, its Time-for-Trial Task Force, and its Jury Instruction Committee, and is a past chair of the WSBA Rules of Professional Conduct Committee. Professor Boerner is a highly sought-after lecturer, a frequent contributor to law reviews, and the author of Sentencing in Washington: A Legal Analysis of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1981.

Professor Paula Lustbader

Professor Lustbader has been the director of the Seattle University School of Law's Academic Resource Center since its inception in 1987. She is a nationally recognized scholar and speaker on law school academic-support programs, learning theory, teaching methods, and diversity, and has given presentations on these subjects at national and international conferences. In addition to being the past chair of both the Teaching Methods and Academic Support sections of the Association of American Law Schools, she has been a frequent program organizer and presenter at conferences sponsored by the Law School Admission Council Institutes for Academic Support, the Institute for Law School Teaching, the Society of American Law Teachers, and the Legal Writing Institute.

Alternative Admissions Program and Academic Resource Center

The Seattle University School of Law's Alternative Admissions Program and Academic Resource Center work to diversify the student body — and by extension the population of practicing attorneys — by providing students from diverse backgrounds with access to legal education and other non-academic support so that they may fully participate in the law school and enrich the learning experience of all its students. These programs have been instrumental in increasing the diversity of the student body.

About the WSBA

The WSBA is part of the judicial branch, exercising a governmental function authorized by the Washington State Supreme Court to license the state's 29,800 lawyers. The WSBA both regulates lawyers under the authority of the Court and serves its members as a professional association — all without public funding.

As a regulatory agency, it administers the bar admission process, including the bar exam; provides record-keeping and licensing functions; and administers the lawyer-discipline system. As a professional association, the WSBA provides continuing legal education for attorneys, in addition to numerous other educational and member-service activities.

The governance of the WSBA is vested in its 14-person Board of Governors. There are three governors from the seventh congressional district; one from each of the other eight districts; and three at-large members, one of whom represents the Young Lawyers Division. The 2006-2007 president is Ellen Conedera Dial, of Seattle, and the 2006-2007 president-elect is Stanley A. Bastian, of Wenatchee.

The Board meets regularly (every six weeks) at various locations around the state, and its meetings are open to the public. Much of the work of the Bar is carried out through 23 standing committees; 26 sections; and a Young Lawyers Division, with its many committees.

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