IndyBar: IndyBar Executive Director Receives National Recognition

By Kevin Ryan, NABE Immediate Past President and Monroe County (NY) Executive Director

The Bolton Award, the National Association of Bar Executive’s highest accolade, is presented biennially to a bar executive who epitomizes the highest standard of professional excellence. The award is named in honor of Fred Bolton, executive director and secretary of the Pennsylvania Bar Association from 1966 to 1977.

Criteria include:

• Professionalism, character and integrity

• Vision and leadership

• Service to the legal profession

• Managerial ability

• Development of bar staff

• Providing cutting-edge programs for members

• Improvements in the administration of justice

• Entrepreneurship and creativity

• Warmth, friendliness and camaraderie

• Service within NABE generally

This year’s award recipient shines in all these areas. When we at NABE think of a bar executive who epitomizes our profession, who stands out as a leader in our field, whose association is the one we look to for cutting-edge, successful ideas and programs, we think of Julie Armstrong of the Indianapolis Bar Association.

In her more than 30 years at the IndyBar, Julie has served NABE in numerous leadership roles on nearly every committee, spent many productive years on our board and served as president in 2019-2020, where she led NABE through the beginning of the pandemic. And even though her leadership tenure on the board ended in 2021, Julie continues to give back to NABE by speaking at programs, serving on our strategic planning committee and mentoring bar professionals across the country.

Julie is synonymous with one word in particular: innovation. She has been described as “visionary” by her colleagues. One letter in support of her nomination noted how often we have heard bar professionals say, “When I grow up, I want to be Julie Armstrong,” and how many of us, me included, have said we wish our bar could be like the IndyBar. Hardly a major NABE, National Conference of Bar Presidents or National Conference of Bar Foundations event has gone by without some panel presentation featuring some new approach or program that started at the IndyBar. And Julie is always there for her NABE colleagues and for bar leaders, always willing to contribute, to answer her phone, to share her wisdom.

A bar leader at the IndyBar said this about Julie:

“Julie has led the Indianapolis Bar Association and the Indianapolis Bar Foundation for more than 30 years on a quest to serve our legal community with the most impactful programming and broadest support for the community possible … She has innovative ideas and a staff who have learned to execute those ideas without flaws … She has achieved the respect and admiration of the bench and bar, not as an end in itself, but by discovering that it is the byproduct of a life well lived and work that has become a high art.”

Wow! No wonder we all wish we could grow up to be Julie Armstrong. It was a pleasure to present the 2023 Bolton Award for Outstanding Bar leadership to my friend, Julie Armstrong, executive director of the Indianapolis Bar Association.•