Ms. Paula J. Frederick

Former General Counsel

State Bar of Georgia

Paula Frederick retired from her role as General Counsel of the State Bar of Georgia in January 2025. She served in the Office of the General Counsel for a total of 36 years, rising through the ranks as an Assistant General Counsel handling lawyer disciplinary cases,  as Deputy General Counsel with management and supervisory responsibility, and,  beginning in 2009, as General Counsel for the organization.  The State Bar of Georgia is a unified bar organization with over 55,000 members. As General Counsel Ms. Frederick led an 11-lawyer office responsible for interpreting the ethics rules for lawyers, prosecuting lawyer discipline cases, and providing legal advice to the officers and directors of the Bar. She authored over 100 ethics articles for the Georgia Bar Journal and has presented hundreds of continuing legal education programs on issues of lawyer ethics and professionalism.  

A native of Riverside, California, Ms. Frederick attended Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in May 1979.  She is a 1982 graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, where she served as Associate Articles Editor for the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.  Prior to her work at the State Bar of Georgia, Ms. Frederick spent six years as a lawyer with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society handling civil legal matters for low-income people.   

Ms. Frederick was the first African American president of the Atlanta Bar Association, which reached 6,000 members during her presidency and is the largest voluntary bar association in the southeast.  Her focus as president was on pro bono projects and programs to benefit the Atlanta community.  She was president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys in 1998 and is also an active member of the Gate City Bar Association. 

Ms. Frederick is actively involved with the American Bar Association, where she chairs the Coordinating Council of the Center for Professional Responsibility.  She has an extensive history of service within the ABA, and in the past chaired the Standing Committee on Professional Regulation, the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and the ABA Diversity Center. She currently serves as co-chair of the Decennial Review Commission and is Secretary of the Government/Public Sector Lawyers Division.  She has been a delegate in the ABA House of Delegates for more than 25 years. 
In Atlanta, Ms. Frederick sits on the Board of Georgia Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. In the past she has served on the Boards of the Atlanta Bar Foundation, the Grant Park Conservancy, Vox Teen Communications, the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, the Georgia Legal Services Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.  She served on the City of Atlanta Board of Ethics from 1997 through 1999. 

Ms. Frederick is AV-rated by Martindale-Hubbell®.  Upon her retirement the Supreme Court of Georgia presented her with its Amicus Curiae award in recognition of her service “as a guiding hand in upholding the integrity of the practice of law in Georgia.”  In 2025 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the State Bar of Georgia Young Lawyers Division. In 2014 the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys awarded her the Leah Ward Sears Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession. She was a 2004 inductee into the Gate City Bar Association Hall of Fame, and a recipient of the Charles Watkins Award for distinguished and sustained service to the Atlanta Bar Association.  She was the 2002 recipient of the Kessler Award from the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers.  In 2001 she was honored with a leadership award from the Emory Law School Public Interest Committee and a community service award from the Black American Law Students Association at the Georgia State University School of Law.  In 1995 she was State Bar of Georgia Employee of the Year.