The original Constitution of the American Bar Association defined the purpose of the ABA as being for “the advancement of the science of jurisprudence, the promotion of the administration of justice and a uniformity of legislation throughout the country.”

While this Constitution still considerably shapes the focus of the ABA, today’s legal profession is very different from what it was when the ABA was first formed 140 years ago in Saratoga Springs, New York. When 75 lawyers from 20 states and the District of Columbia met to create the American Bar Association on August 21, 1878, there was no national code of ethics.[1] Most lawyers practiced solo. There were no universal standards for law schools because most lawyers did not have law degrees, and attending law school at that time was rare. Young lawyers learned their craft through apprenticeships and by reading classic legal texts. Improving diversity within the profession was almost certainly not a topic of conversation.

Today, the ABA is as committed as ever to improving the justice system and the rule of law. It works to serve its members, the legal profession, and the public by defending liberty and pursuing justice as the national voice of the legal profession.

Goal I: Serve Our Members.

Objective:

1. Provide benefits, programs, and services that promote members’ professional growth and quality of life.

Goal II: Improve Our Profession.

Objectives:

1. Promote the highest-quality legal education.

2. Promote competence, ethical conduct, and professionalism.

3. Promote pro bono and public service by the legal profession.

Goal III: Eliminate Bias and Enhance Diversity.

Objectives:

1. Promote full and equal participation in the Association, our profession, and

the justice system by all persons.

2. Eliminate bias in the legal profession and the justice system.

Goal IV: Advance the Rule of Law.

Objectives:

1. Increase public understanding of and respect for the rule of law, the legal

process, and the role of the legal profession at home and throughout the world.

2. Hold governments accountable under law.

3. Work for just laws, including human rights, and a fair legal process.

4. Assure meaningful access to justice for all persons.

5. Preserve the independence of the legal profession and the judiciary.

The ABA takes great pride in its mission, and these four goals are at the core of everything the Association does. For almost all ABA members, the continued existence of a free and democratic society depends upon a sound system of justice that is based on the rule of law. America’s lawyers are officers of the court who play a vital role in the preservation of society.

Goal I: Serve Our Members.

The ABA’s strength comes from its members. Over the years, the ABA has grown from 75 founding members from across the United States to more than 400,000 members worldwide. At the founding of the Association, seven committees were created, which included Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Judicial Administration, International Law, and Commercial Law. Today, the ABA has 3,500 entities, including 21 Sections, seven Divisions, and six Forums, as well as thousands of committees working on programs, policies, and member development. The ABA’s committees offer Association members essential information on emerging topics, skills enhancement, and timely issues facing the legal profession. Last year, ABA Sections, Divisions, and Forums hosted more than 300 live Continuing Legal Education programs and hundreds of webinars/teleconferences with tens of thousands of participants.[2]

In addition, the ABA and its members work continuously throughout the year to create original substantive content to advance the legal profession in the United States and around the globe. Each year the ABA produces more than 1,000 print offerings, creating one of the world's most comprehensive legal libraries.

Goal II: Improve Our Profession.

From the very beginning, the American Bar Association has been synonymous with American legal education. One of the ABA’s earliest committees was the Committee on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. Written bar examinations were just coming into vogue at the time of the ABA’s founding; while previously used and required by most states, the examinations had mostly been informal oral tests.[3] As such, legal education and subsequent admission to the bar have been intertwined from the very beginning of the ABA.

The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar embodies legal leadership and offers services to those institutions and individuals that educate law students and admit lawyers to practice. The Section’s Council and its Accreditation Committee are acknowledged by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accrediting agency for programs that culminate with the juris doctorate degree.[4] Both the Council and the Section, in this accreditation role, are independent from the ABA, as required by DOE regulations. ABA-approved law schools are recognized by all state supreme courts as meeting the education requirements necessary to qualify for the bar examination.[5]

In addition, those in the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar are part of a group that is 10,000 members strong and aims “to improve legal education and lawyer licensing by fostering cooperation among legal educators, practitioners and judges through workshops, conferences and publications. The Section also studies and makes recommendations for the improvement of the bar admissions process.”[6]

In 2017, in response to the calls for change to our system of legal education, the ABA’s Board of Governors created the Commission on the Future of Legal Education to serve as the Association’s forward-thinking body on legal education. The group is charged with evaluating how we can do a better job of educating and testing the competency of the future lawyers of our country. This ABA Commission has the unique ability to bring together the disparate interests under the same tent – the bar examiners, the law school deans, the state bars, and others – to talk meaningfully about the best ways to educate the lawyers of the future. This innovative new group will thoughtfully consider what alternatives should look like and what modifications should be made to ensure that future lawyers entering the profession will be up to the task of providing the service and expertise their clients deserve. 

Furthermore, the ABA works to maintain and raise the standards of the legal profession far beyond the institution of legal education. In 1906, Roscoe Pound, who would later become a Harvard Law School dean, gave an influential speech on the “Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice” at the ABA Annual Meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota. In this speech, which was both controversial and admired at the time, Pound called for standards and reforms to restore public trust in the civil administration of justice.[7]

Today, the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility upholds professional and ethical conduct among judges and lawyers.[8] The Center, which was created in 1978, has become a national source of professional regulation, judicial and legal ethics, and client protection by developing, analyzing, and implementing standards as distilled from scholarly resources and current policies governing the regulation of the legal profession.[9] The Center does this in an effort to hold lawyers and judges to the highest standards, and to protect clients who are not as well-versed.

The Center for Professional Responsibility’s Policy Implementation Committee also assists states with the enactment of changes to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The Canons of Professional Ethics, adopted in 1908, were the first national standards for legal ethics. The ABA Model Rules of Professional Responsibility were adopted by the ABA House of Delegates in 1983 and, with amendments, continues to serve as a model for the ethics rules in each state.

The Association’s commitment to judicial independence is consistent with raising the standards of the legal profession. As the National Center for State Courts said, “Justice depends upon the ability of judges to render impartial decisions based upon open-minded and unbiased consideration of the facts and the law in each case.”[10] The ABA has a number of committees and task forces dedicated to preserving judicial independence; as such, recent ABA presidents have made the creation and maintenance of fair and impartial courts a priority. It is crucial to continue and support efforts to enhance public understanding about the role of the judiciary and the importance of impartial courts within the American democracy. The ABA Standing Committee on Public Education and the ABA Division for Public Education serve both ABA members and non-member attorneys by asking every practicing lawyer to further the public’s understanding of the legal community and the American justice system.[11]

Furthermore, in an effort to improve legal representation, the ABA is also committed to providing access to justice for all through the encouragement of pro bono legal services. Lawyers perform more pro bono service than any other profession. The ABA established its first Legal Aid Committee in 1920 with statesman Charles Evans Hughes as its first chair.[12]

It is interesting to note that the ABA’s biggest annual lobbying event, ABA Day, which is held every spring in Washington, D.C., was founded more than three decades ago to protect the Legal Services Corporation, the single largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans in the nation, and to save it from being abolished.

Today, the ABA Division for Legal Services provides staff support for 10 ABA committees and commissions that promote access to justice for all and improvements in the delivery of legal services. These committees and commissions cover access to justice for poor and moderate-income people, and issues affecting the legal profession.[13]

Goal III: Eliminate Bias and Enhance Diversity.

Early gender statistics for lawyers are hard to come by, but we know that women’s participation in the legal profession has grown dramatically since Mary B. Grossman of Cleveland, Ohio, and Mary Florence Lathrop of Denver, Colorado, joined as the ABA’s first two women members in 1918. Women represented 3 percent of the legal population in 1951, and today female attorneys account for 34 percent of the profession and 33 percent of Association membership. Women make up nearly 48 percent of recent law school graduates.[14]  In 1943, the ABA, which had previously restricted membership to whites only, finally passed a resolution that membership was not dependent on “race, creed or color.”[15] Following this resolution, the first African-American lawyer was admitted to membership in 1950.[16]

Today, the Association is wholeheartedly committed to ensuring diversity and inclusion throughout the ABA. The effectiveness of all the ABA’s pursuits is weakened as long as the justice system does not adequately reflect the population it serves. The ABA has aggressively pursued strategies to diversify both the Association and the legal profession as a whole; these efforts should be at the forefront of every bar association’s agenda and is certainly at the forefront of everything the ABA does. Throughout its history, the Association has recognized that it has a duty to properly represent the legal profession and the interests of justice.

Goal III was adopted by the ABA House of Delegates in 2008, drawn from what was previously known as ABA’s Goal IX, which was “[t]o promote full and equal participation in the legal profession by minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and persons of differing sexual orientations and gender identities.”[17]

The ABA has several Goal III entities:

Commission on Disability Rights — promotes the ABA’s commitment to justice and full, equal participation in the legal profession for people with mental, physical, and sensory disabilities.[18]

Task Force on Gender Equity — addresses the continuing gender equity issues that exist in the legal profession and in society at large.[19]

Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity — provides the framework to effectively utilize and coordinate ABA diversity resources and supports Goal III, which helps the ABA maintain racial and ethnic diversity as a priority.[20]

Commission on Women in the Profession — the national voice for women lawyers, which also ensures equal opportunity for professional growth and advancement.[21]

Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) — seeks to secure equal treatment in the ABA, the legal profession, and the justice system without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity.[22]

ABA Staff Diversity Council — works to promote full participation in the Association by all staff persons.[23]

ABA Hispanic Commission — addresses key legal issues facing Hispanics throughout the U.S. such as voting rights, immigration, civil rights, and access to the courts.[24]

The ABA Council on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline (Pipeline Council) works to increase the number of diverse students who are on track to becoming lawyers.[25] The ABA also offers Legal Opportunity Scholarships to diverse law students, providing $15,000 of financial assistance over the course of their law school career.[26] Former ABA President William G. Paul started the scholarship fund in order to encourage racially and ethnically diverse students to attend law school. As Paul said: “We can best serve society if members of the legal profession come from all segments of the population, reflecting the diversity of the United States — and financial aid during law school must be a vital component of any effort to increase diversity in the profession.”[27] The first students received Scholarship awards during the 2000-2001 academic year. Since the program was created, 360 students from across the country (at 20 students a year for 18 years) have received an ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship. These exceptional scholarship recipients have overcome adversity and gone on to practice at some of the most prestigious firms and organizations across the country. The scholarship program is important not only to the future of the Association, but also to the legal profession as a whole.

Goal IV: Advance the Rule of Law.

International law was the focus of one of the first seven committees established by the Association. From its inception, the ABA recognized the importance of international law in laying the foundation for what would become the largest voluntary professional organization in the world. The ABA International Law Committee eventually became the ABA Section of International Law (SIL) and has focused on its mission: advancing the rule of law in the world and enhancing the quality and outreach of the legal profession worldwide.

SIL has been a key player in many important international legal issues throughout its history, including the relationship between international treaties and the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of institutions like the Permanent Court of International Justice, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and their predecessor bodies. The SIL was also instrumental in the creation of a number of international bar associations and legal organizations, including the Inter-American Bar Association, the Inter-Pacific Bar Association, the American Society of International Law, and the International Bar Association. SIL’s international perspective also led to its involvement in technical legal assistance projects to advance the rule of law around the world.

Today, SIL has more than 22,000 individual members in more than 90 countries.[28] It serves ABA members, the profession, and the public through continuing legal education, publications, dozens of substantive committees, the International Legal Resource Center (a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme), outreach to the global legal community, interaction with the U.S. government, policy development, and advocacy.[29] SIL leadership also led to the creation of the ABA’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI)[30] and the Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI).[31]

            ROLI is committed to collaborative learning and innovative research that enables it to identify effective approaches to rule of law development, incorporate these into creative program design, capture lessons learned from our work, and share them with the broader development policy community. ROLI provides thought leadership through publications and events, sharing insights from our work in almost 60 countries around the world. In 2016, ROLI participated in consortia that produced an assess­ment of the justice system in the Central African Republic and a toolkit for advancing justice in the context of efforts to achieve the U.N.’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. From ROLI’s work to advance the rule of law over the past 25 years, it is clear that change comes from the creativity and drive of individual people committed to the cause of advancing the rule of law. For this reason, ROLI puts partnerships with local actors at the center of all its programs. The Association proudly supports these efforts to drive change.

Conclusion

Our world grows smaller each day. Few of the ABA’s founders who gathered in Saratoga Springs could have imagined the scope and implications of the changes in the legal profession, especially those resulting from the globalization of commerce and law. In fact, few lawyers just 10 years ago could have predicted the issues facing lawyers today. The Association works tirelessly to understand the changes in the legal profession and the challenges of the day, while providing resources to help members around the world become better lawyers. The ABA is the voice of the American legal profession, but it works to strengthen the rule of law worldwide. As lawyers, we are many, but as a legal profession and an Association, we are one.