FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
   
June 27, 2008     

Contact: Stephanie Perry
Communications Specialist/Website Editor
206-733-5932; stephaniep@wsba.org

WSBA General Counsel Robert D. Welden Named National Client Protection Organization's President-Elect

(SEATTLE) — The Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) is pleased to announce that Robert D. Welden, WSBA general counsel, has been named president-elect of the National Client Protection Organization.

Welden has been the general counsel of the Washington State Bar Association since 1988. Before that, he was a staff attorney and discipline counsel for the WSBA.  He was admitted to the bar in 1970 and was in private practice in Seattle with the law firm Smith, Welden, Kaplan, Young and Withey; was staff attorney with the Seattle Indian Center Legal Services; and worked in the office of the Seattle-King County Public Defender. He is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law.

Welden is the administrator of the WSBA Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection, and served as reporter for the WSBA Committee to Define the Practice of Law and the WSBA Future of the Legal Profession Study Group. He served as the administrator of the Washington Practice of Law Board, and was staff liaison to the Death Penalty Subcommittee of the WSBA Committee on Public Defense and co-authored its report. He has served in various capacities with the American Bar Association, including the Standing Committee on Professional Discipline, Standing Committee on Client Protection, Advisory Commission on Lawyers' Funds for Client Protection, and the Task Force on the Model Definition of the Practice of Law. He is a member of the National Organization of Bar Counsel, the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, and he is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

The National Client Protection Organization, Inc. (NCPO) is a not-for-profit membership corporation organized in May 1998. NCPO is foremost an educational resource for the exchange of information among law client protection funds throughout the United States and Canada. NCPO's purposes include providing help and support to client protection funds and programs to protect legal consumers from dishonest conduct in the practice of law. Toward that end, NCPO's efforts include a quarterly newsletter, The Client Protection Webb, and national workshops for the sharing of experiences and administrative techniques and procedures.

About the Washington State Bar Association
The WSBA is part of the judicial branch, exercising a governmental function authorized by the Washington State Supreme Court to license the state's 32,600 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, the WSBA 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 2007-2008 president is Stanley A. Bastian, of Wenatchee. The 2007-2008 president-elect is Mark A. Johnson, of Seattle, the immediate past-president is Ellen Conedera Dial, of Seattle, and the 2008-09 president-elect is Salvador A. Mungia, of Tacoma. 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 numerous standing committees; 26 sections; and a Young Lawyers Division, with its many committees.

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