American Bar Association

The mission of the American Bar Association is to be the national representative of the legal profession, serving the public and the profession by promoting justice, professional excellence and respect for the law. Key Dates: Lawyers at Saratoga Springs, New York, organize the American Bar Association (ABA). The American Association of Law Schools is started with support from the ABA. North Dakota becomes first state to require all practicing attorneys to be state bar members. ABA creates its House of Delegates that ties state bar associations with the ABA. The American Bar Association is a voluntary professional association that includes practicing attorneys, judges, law professors, court administrators, and nonpracticing attorneys involved in journalism or other occupations. Although it has no formal authority to discipline lawyers who break the ABA's ethical code, it influences state bars that do have that power. Likewise, the ABA plays a significant role in proposing state and federal laws, reforming the court system, accrediting law schools, and evaluating individuals nominated by the president to be federal judges. It also is a major publisher, with about 90 periodicals such as the American Bar Association Journal and many others on various legal specialties. Although the ABA is the major legal association, only about half of the nation's attorneys are members. It competes with numerous other associations based on ethnicity or legal specialty. This large and complex organization, with numerous committees and sections, deals with trends in the legal profession, such as the increased use of paralegals and the effects of Information Age technology, as well as legal controversies such as abortion, the death penalty, improved legal access for all persons, and the litigation explosion. Lawyers played a crucial role in founding the United States; most of the men at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were lawyers. Many early American presidents and other government leaders were lawyers, yet in the early and mid-1800s popular reaction against lawyers and other professionals mounted as part of Jacksonian Democracy. The prevailing complaint at the time was that just about anyone could become a doctor or lawyer without much training. In 1851, for example, the Indiana state constitution mandated that any citizen and voter of good character could begin a law practice. Medical licensing also ended during that era. The emphasis was on equality, at least for white males. Attitudes began changing after the Civil War as lawyers in New York City formed a city bar association in 1870, followed by state associations in Kentucky in 1871, New Hampshire in 1873, Iowa in 1874, Connecticut in 1875, and Illinois in 1877. At that time many elite lawyers in New York City and other big cities began counseling big businesses, rather than serving primarily as courtroom litigators. In the post-Civil War period, corporations expanded in size and influence, resulting in huge smokestack industries and also an increasing demand for attorneys. Although others had pushed for the creation of a national professional society for lawyers, Simeon E. Baldwin, a leading Connecticut attorney, played the key role in starting the ABA. Following Baldwin's invitation, on August 21, 1878, a group of 100 lawyers from 21 states and the District of Columbia met in Saratoga Springs, New York, to organize their profession's first national association. Most of the men who formed the ABA were elite corporate lawyers. Author Jethro K. Lieberman described early ABA membership: 'You could become an invitee to membership if you were white, Protestant and native born, preferably with a British surname, and attended the elite law schools such as Harvard, Yale and Columbia; only then did you have a chance of prospering. Catholics, Jews, women and blacks were automatically excluded from membership. This exclusion was necessary to the elite bar's sense of identity. Any fratern