Laurie A. Gibson ’80

Laurie A. Gibson ’80 died March 15, 2012, in Durham, following seven years of treatment for ovarian cancer. She was born on September 16, 1958, in Lewiston, and was valedictorian of her class at Edward Little High School in 1976. She was a member of Chi Psi fraternity and a dean’s list student who graduated cum laude from Bowdoin with highest honors in history. She was awarded a State of Maine scholarship and the James E. Bland History Prize. She also attended Warnborough College at Oxford, England. She went on to graduate in 1984 from the University of Maine Law School, where she was a member of the Law Review. After being admitted to the Maine bar, she clerked for then-Chief Justice Robert Clifford of the Maine Superior Court. She joined the law firm of Skeleton, Taintor, and Abbott in 1985 and later concentrated on litigation research and writing at Berman & Simmons in Lewiston. In 1993 she left to focus on her writing career and formed Lawyers Assistance Group, the first law firm in Maine to offer contract writing services to other lawyers. In 1989, she was appointed by Governor John McKernan to the Maine Board of Bar Examiners, where she served first as secretary and then chair until 2005. In that capacity, she helped facilitate a complete reorganization and modernization of the admissions process. She wrote articles on bar admission an issues and represented the Board on briefs and in arguments before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. In 2001 she was appointed to the Subcommittee on Bar Administration of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, where she served until 2006. She also served on the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Subcommittee on Multistate Performance Test Policy until resigning due to illness in 2007. She served on the Maine Bar Journal Editorial Advisory Committee from 1989 through 2001, and as chair in 2001. She was appointed Reporter for the Maine Civil Rules Committee in 2009 and as a Trustee of the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection in 2010. She remained a student all her life, taking courses at Bowdoin in various subjects that interested her and continuing painting classes in recent years at the Maine College of Art. She was a serious student of yoga, studying over tie in the Iyengar, Anusara, Kripalu, and Sivananda traditions and eventually receiving her certification as a registered yoga teacher in 2008. She is survived by her husband, Stephen P. Beale ’64, whom she married in 1998; her mother, Janet Howard Gibson; a brother, William J. Gibson; a sister, gail Gibson Sheffield; a stepdaughter, Andrea Beale Naumovich; and a stepson, Martin Beale. She was predeceased by her father, Stanley E. Gibson.

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