The reigns of San Juan County’s bar association are passing hands.

Katie Loring of the Law Offices of Skinner & Saar was recently elected by the association to be president of the local bar in 2010.

Loring, who joined the law firm of Skinner & Saar as an associate attorney in 2008, succeeds Friday Harbor-based attorney Carla Higginson. Higginson, who twice served as president in the 1980s, has been the association’s president the past three years, and holds the distinction as the longest-serving president in the past three decades.

Higginson, a fifth-generation islander, established a law practice in Friday Harbor in 1980.

The local bar, which holds monthly meetings, had 43 members in 2010.

During her tenure as president, Higginson oversaw the swearing-in ceremony of San Juan County’s first Superior Court judge, the late John O. Linde, in 2008, the subsequent dedication of the county’s superior court to the memory of Judge Linde, following his untimely death in December 2009, and conducted a judicial evaluation poll to aid the governor in the eventual selection of attorney Donald Eaton to fill the vacant position of superior court judge.

“It was my privilege to serve as president of the San Juan County Bar Association during such an historical period for this county,” Higginson said in a press release. “We have a very well-qualified and professional group of attorneys in our county and I was honored to be at the head of such a fine group of people. However, I could never have imagined the joy and the terrible sorrow that the past three years would bring.”

Higginson also has had a consistent role in helping to coordinate Friday Harbor High School’s annual mock trials and presided over those mock trials as judge.

A graduate of Boston College Law School, Loring served as law clerk for Judge Mary Fairhurst of the Washington State Supreme Court in 2004 and 2005, and worked for the Seattle-based firm of Perkins Coie prior to moving to Friday Harbor in 2008. She is a member of the Friday Harbor chapter of Soroptimist International and a graduate of Leadership San Juan Island, and has served on the board of directors of each organization.

As president, Loring will oversee the association’s pro-bono program and family law seminar, its participation in Friday Harbor High’s mock trials, and serve as liason to San Juan County’s Law and Justice Council.