Former Crowe & Dunlevy firm president and current of counsel attorney William G. Paul, a past president of the American Bar Association (ABA), was honored with the Pace/Alexander Award for Lifetime Achievement Feb. 3 in Miami, Florida. Presented annually by the ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline, this national award recognizes an outstanding legal professional who has championed significant work to increase the number of racial and ethnic minority students entering a track to become members of the legal profession.
Crowe & Dunlevy has a long history of nurturing inclusion and mutual respect among people of diverse backgrounds, a practice Paul helped spearhead during his many years with the firm. While serving as ABA president from 1999-2000, Paul founded the ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship. He and his wife, Barbara, made an initial contribution of $50,000 to launch the scholarships. Paul’s firm, Crowe & Dunlevy, matched the $50,000 contribution and became the first law firm in the nation to lend support to the program, providing a critical impetus to the initial fundraising effort. To date, 340 racial and ethnic minority ABA scholars have benefited from the financial assistance afforded them by the ABA to further their legal careers.
Paul has served as president of the American Bar Association, the American Bar Endowment, both the Oklahoma and Oklahoma County Bar Associations and the National Conference of Bar Presidents. He was also inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2003.