About Alice E. Knapp | Attorney at Law

A graduate of the University of Maine School of Law, Alice Knapp has been practicing law in Maine since 1989, the year she also moved to her adopted and beloved town of Richmond.  She began her career as a business lobbyist, working at the State House through two legislative sessions in order to learn the legislative process.  She left lobbying to pursue her passion for public service and accepted a job offer from the Bureau of Insurance.  Alice began her eleven year career as an insurance regulator working as a staff attorney assigned to support the Bureau’s newly created Market Conduct Division.  She was soon reassigned to focus on health insurance issues to coincide with the legislature’s enactment of a series of far reaching health insurance market reforms.  Alice headed up the Bureau’s HMO licensing team, helped draft model consumer protection rules on managed care and grievance processes as a subcommittee member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and with the help of her Bureau team, she drafted the state’s first major substantive rule, successfully marshalling Bureau Of Insurance Rule 850, Health Plan Accountability, through the rulemaking process and subsequent legislative approval.  Alice was appointed the first Director of the Bureau’s legislatively created Consumer Health Care Division in 1999, during which tenure she worked with the legislature to help draft Maine’s Patient Bill of Rights.

Alice left the Bureau to join the Bangor health law practice of Philadelphia based Duane Morris, one of the country’s largest law firms.  During her tenure with the firm, Alice represented hospitals in certificate of need proceedings, successfully defended a gastroenterology practice in a Medicare audit, overcame an initial health plan denial of a surgical procedure on behalf of a disabled former Lewiston police officer, helped prevent the closure of a residential facility for severely disabled adults, represented a large physical therapy practice and the Maine Chiropractic Association, and took on the representation of a start-up mental health agency, handling all the agency’s legal, regulatory, and business needs throughout the course of its rapid, multi-location expansion and its eventual sale to a larger agency several years later.  Alice drafted the state’s first mental health agency social worker affiliate agreements, winning state approval for what was then an innovative model of MaineCare contracting.

Concluding that her heart did not lie with large firm law practice and wanting to get back to Richmond full time, Alice decided to start her own practice.  Having long admired the old Richmond Hotel - a 200 year old building featured on Maine Preservation’s 1997 list of the State’s ten most endangered properties, which had had stood empty and for sale since the early 1980’s - Alice took on its renovation and simultaneously founded her solo practice on May 1, 2002, first working out of her home until renovations at 21 Main Street were sufficiently complete to allow her to move into her new offices.

Alice has embraced small town practice, becoming proficient in family law, real estate transactions, and basic estate planning in response to community need while continuing to offer quality, cost effective specialty services in health law and insurance practice.  Having served on the Richmond Planning Board for nearly a decade, followed by six years on the Richmond Board of Selectmen, the last year as Chair, Alice is well versed in land use and municipal law.  She is a tenacious advocate for her clients and a creative problem solver.  An accomplished writer, Alice is particularly good at crafting contracts and has handled many complicated transactions ranging from the sale of medical practices to the dissolution of partnerships and non-profit agencies.  She began writing for The Maine Lawyers Review in 2013, taking on the digesting of Maine’s Superior Court decisions and contributing articles for the paper’s 24 yearly issues. Alice limits her practice to the civil arena and continues to enjoy the great diversity of issues she is called upon to deal with in the course of providing legal services to the community she loves.