Ms. Paula J. Frederick

Former General Counsel

State Bar of Georgia

Paula Frederick is General Counsel for the State Bar of Georgia, a unified bar organization with 54,000 members. As general counsel, Frederick is responsible for interpreting the ethics rules for lawyers, prosecuting lawyer discipline cases, and providing legal advice to the officers and directors of the organization. She has served in the Office of the General Counsel for 35 years, and was Deputy General Counsel for Discipline before assuming the General Counsel role.

Frederick is a 1982 graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Law and a 1979 graduate of Duke University. Prior to joining the Office of the General Counsel, she spent six years as a staff attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society handling civil legal matters for low-income people.

Frederick is a past president of the Atlanta Bar Association and the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys. She is also an active member of the American Bar Association, where she is chair of the Center for Professional Responsibility.  In the past she has served the ABA as chair of its Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, chair of the Standing Committee on Lawyer Regulation, as a member of the Board of Governors, and as chair of the Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity.