Diane Butler

Diane Butler focuses her practice on immigration and employment services. She has experience with a wide range of immigration issues, focusing on temporary, nonimmigrant work and employment-based permanent resident status (“green cards”), including investor visas.

Diane has worked on matters involving company compliance with immigration laws and has handled a number of worksite enforcement investigations and audits. She has assisted clients with citizenship issues, strategizing and problem solving, and applying for waivers of inadmissibility.

Chambers USA’s Guide to America’s Leading Lawyers for Business states that “she is held in high regard by peers, while clients praise her responsiveness and round-the-clock availability,” and one client stated “if Diane can’t do it then no one can. She possesses great attention to detail and thoroughness.”

She was also named as a “Top Business Immigration Lawyer” in Seattle Business magazine, as well as a “Top Lawyer” by her peers in Seattle Magazine. She is a director for the national American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Board of Governors.

In addition, Diane holds a Yellow Belt certification in Legal Lean Sigma and Project Management. Her remarks have been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications, and she has been interviewed on KING-5 TV news.

Additional Qualifications:

• Shareholder, Lane Powell, Seattle, 1998-2017
• Associate, Bogle & Gates, Seattle, 1994-1998
• Associate, Tousley Brain, Seattle, 1993-1994
• Law Clerk, Norton Rose (formerly Bull, Housser & Tupper), Shanghai, China, 1988-1989

Professional & Community Activities:

• Immigrant Voting Rights Task Force, City of Seattle, 2013-2015
• Pro Bono Services, Medical Legal Partnership, 2014-present
• Advisory Committee, Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle, 2005-present
• Advisory Board, Gage Academy of Art, 2003-present
• American Immigration Lawyers Association:
  • Director, Board of Governors, 2011-present
  • Distance Learning Committee, 2014-present
  • Students and Scholars Committee, 2013-present
  • Department of Homeland Security Transformation Committee, 2011-2014
  • Chair, Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection Committee, 2005-2008
  • Executive Committee, Washington Chapter, 2002-2004

Education:

• J.D., The George Washington University Law School, 1992
• B.A., Communications, University of Wyoming, 1983, cum laude