Kitsap family law attorney Paula Crane has touched many people in her 26 years of practice — many of them coming from the toughest backgrounds. In June, the Washington State Bar Association presented Crane with its 2005 Pro Bono Award.

“She’s a very special person,” said Olivia Dennis, executive director of Kitsap Legal Services, who nominated Crane for the award and has known her through KLS for 15 years. “She has done outstanding things for our program.”

Crane in fact helped establish Kitsap Legal Services 18 years ago with a small group of others including Judge Russell Hartman. Crane has been on the board of directors since then, teaches at the clinics and takes some of the most difficult family law KLS cases, Dennis said. She helped establish Kitsap County CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate), has been a mentor to Dennis and others at KLS, and has been involved with other organizations.

“On one level, doing volunteer work is an ethical requirement of lawyers,” Crane said. “To me, it’s a more effective use of my time to do direct representation…and give back when I can. The need for free legal services is overwhelming in family law.”

Crane says she likes “things that proceed according to rules.” Although she had considered a law degree for a long time, she didn’t pursue a legal degree until her husband, Peter Crane, was transferred to Kitsap County through a job. With a family of her own and other family background, she found that a much better fit than criminal law.

“I’m not shy to fight,” she said. “I can get a good adrenaline (rush) out of a good legal fight.”

Fighting on the legal turf is like being a gladiator, she says, and keeps her job from being boring. But she doesn’t necessarily pick which battles to take on. “I go into a fight when we haven’t reached an agreement, not only when I think I’ll win,” she said. “We try to settle until the last minute.”

When asked whether she wins a lot of those fights, she said with a smile, “I win my share.”

Being involved in divorce and custody cases can be emotionally demanding. Although Crane must separate herself from her clients so she can best assess their cases, she does find herself emotionally invested in some of them — and those are the toughest to lose.

Perhaps even tougher is seeing a tragedy in the life of a client, such as the November murders on Bainbridge Island of two girls by their father, Stephen James Byrne, who then killed himself. Crane represented the girls’ mother in 2000 during the couple’s divorce. After the murders, she and Byrnes’ lawyers “bonded together, saying to ourselves, ‘Could we have foreseen this?’” They realized they could not, and the couple had no history of domestic violence, but the “death of those kids stayed with me,” she said.

Even with working on Kitsap’s most difficult family law cases, Crane says the most difficult part of her job is to actually turn a client away. She will not take any cases that she thinks don’t have a chance. “I don’t want to give them false hope or put them in a worse position because they’ll be paying me and lose money,” she said. “I can’t sleep at night if I take someone’s money for a case that doesn’t have merit.”

Crane has earned a reputation among many colleagues as an honest, fair and unbiased attorney. As a Kitsap County Courts pro tempore judge, she is often selected to preside over cases. The lawyers from both sides must agree on the pro tempore judge if not enough judges are available. “I’ve heard some interesting cases in family law,” she said. “You have to consider both sides and only deal with the evidence presented to you even though you may want to know more…You can’t be creative (with decisions) like a lawyer can be.”

Crane said she set off for the legal field because it interested her, not to “do good or anything like that.” But good she has done. Recognized with various awards for her pro bono work through the years, she has gone far beyond the community service involvement expected from attorneys.

“She is probably the most well-balanced person I’ve worked with, and certainly one of the most gracious people I’ve met,” Dennis said. “Our whole board is so excited she got (the award) because it’s a big deal.”.