Johnson County Bar Honors Gene Balloun

The Johnson County Bar Association (JCBA) will present retired Shook Partner Gene Balloun with the President’s Award on December 5, 2018, at its annual meeting.

The JCBA selected Balloun for his “tremendous years of community service, from battling for students’ First Amendment rights to safeguarding more than 1,000 children to find ‘forever homes.’”

Shook has a long history of commitment to pro bono adoptions. In 2018, the Shook-founded Kansas Foster and Adoptive Children Scholarship Fund reached $1 million in scholarships awarded to foster children since the program began in 2001. The program uses state-paid fees from pro bono adoption cases to fund the program. To date, the firm has completed 1,315 Kansas adoption cases, helping families complete the legal process of finding permanent homes for children.

In addition, Balloun and the Shook pro bono team handled the legal work for 19 of the 29 adoptions that occurred in Kansas on National Adoption Day earlier this year.