First Female Chief Resigns Bar Assn. Post

The first woman to serve as executive director of the American Bar Assn. is resigning amid mixed reviews, ending a sometimes stormy three-year tenure.

Jill Wine-Banks, a 47-year-old former Watergate prosecutor, submitted her resignation Thursday to L. Stanley Chauvin Jr., president of the 360,000-member bar. She was hired in August, 1987, for the post, which now pays $225,000 a year.

“Although my tenure at the American Bar Assn. has been an exciting and challenging time, I am now eager and ready to move on to explore several other exciting opportunities awaiting me,” Wine-Banks wrote.

Chauvin credited Wine-Banks with streamlining the bar association’s bureaucracy, reforming its budget process and putting into effect the first long-range plan the association ever had.

“And she broadened the association’s appeal to women, minorites, younger people,” Chauvin said.

Others welcomed her departure.

“Frankly, the mainstream of the ABA’s membership will applaud this change,” said former ABA President Eugene Thomas. “The leadership sets the tone and we want someone who sets a different one.”

Wine-Banks drew unwanted attention last year when news stories suggested that she had used her political clout to seek disciplinary charges against a veterinarian for mistreating her Dalmatian, who died after eating a tampon.

She said she had the right to complain about Mell Wostoupal, who eventually was suspended for 45 days from practice.

At the time, Thomas wrote a letter to bar association leaders calling for Wine-Banks’ resignation, saying she “does not understand the use of power and lacks a sense of decorum and propriety in professional matters.”