Alabama State Bar Bids Fond Farewell to Keith Norman, 0517 ALBJ, 78 The Alabama Lawyer 186 (2017)
| Position | Vol. 78 3 Pg. 186 |
With this issue of The Alabama Lawyer, we celebrate an era that ends this month with the well-deserved retirement of Keith Norman as executive director of the Alabama State Bar, a position with which his name has become synonymous during his 23 years leading this organization. We come to this celebration with enduring gratitude for this servant leader’s willingness to devote his professional career to this calling, and with appreciation for his many valuable contributions to the bar and the legal profession. We congratulate Keith on his retirement, full of admiration for the personal characteristics and attributes that have allowed him to be so effective as our bar executive, and blessed with fond memories of the personal interactions so many of us have enjoyed with Keith and the Norman family over the years–at the two dozen annual meetings he and his staff have organized and at countless other bar functions, committee meetings and day-to-day encounters.
Keith Byrne Norman is home-grown. Raised and schooled in Opelika, Keith left the state only long enough to graduate from Duke University, returning home for law school at the University of Alabama. After serving as staff attorney for Justice Hugh Maddox on the Alabama Supreme Court and spending several years in private practice, Keith came to the state bar in 1988 as assistant executive director, a new position specifically created for him at the prompting of then-Executive Director Reggie Hamner, who became Keith’s mentor and friend for life.
Selected to succeed Reggie when he retired in 1994, Keith has kept the organization on sound footing and built and maintained a talented and dedicated staff. During his two decades-plus leading the bar, he has overseen significant improvements to the bar building, modernization of the bar examination and admissions process, enhancement of the scope and quality of programs and services for members, incorporation and use of technology and many other advancements.
Along the way, Keith has worked successfully with literally thousands of individuals and groups–bar leaders and volunteers, the supreme court and other judges, legislators, bar staff, bar applicants, other-state colleagues, ABA representatives and many others–always representing the bar honorably and effectively as one of its chief...
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