I recently posted this item from the Minnesota Bar Association, which was a review of the book Bowling Alone. It noted:
For example, in almost all professional organizations, including the American Bar Association and eight leading national professional organizations, the ratio of actual members to potential members ("penetration rate") has declined steadily since the mid 1960s. Active participation has declined even more sharply than membership. By all measures, overall active involvement in associations has declined by half since about 1965
What this observes is quite true, and what the book Bowling Alone (apparently) observes about the overall decline in participation in organizations in the television, and now Internet, era is also undoubtedly true. But I wonder with the ABA in particular if it simply is because the organization has become irrelevant, and it's current actions make it more so.
The ABA is an old organization. It was founded in 1878. And it was reformist organization. The reform it sought was to the practice of law itself.
In 1878, while law was a profession, it was one that was tainted by the bottom end of the practice, over which there was very little regulatoin. There were always lawyers with high standards, but there were at that time a lot of lawyers with low ones, and overall there was little that was done about it in the profession. Lawyers have always been a largely self regulating profession, an there wasn't much self regulating going on at the time.
Along came the ABA with a mission to address that. It's goal was to raise the standards of practice. It sought to do this by creating standards where it thought that there should be some, to create ethical standards that pertained to the practice of law, and to even re-define the professional nature of practice itself. Whereas law was a profession which people had generally entered by apprenticing themselves to a practicing lawyer (reading the law) and then taking the bar, the ABA sought to encourage lawyers to be university educated at a doctorate level. The goal wasn't accidental, in doing that it sought to put law on the same plain occupied by medicine, with a similar claim to educational requirements.
The ABA was amazingly successful, over a very long period of time, in achieving its goals. It accredits law schools, with some states requiring applicants to their bars to have graduated from an ABA accredited law school. It opines to Congress on the qualifications of judicial nominees. And much of what it sought ot do in terms of elevating the standard of practice it achieved. Maybe so much so, that it made itself irrelevant.
Membership in the organization has been declining for years and I think a lack of relevancy to the practice is part of, or much of, the reason why. The ABA really was having an impact on the profession by the mid 20th Century and most of its reforming work was done in the second half of the 20th Century. Like most organizations that have been really successful in reform, its cast about for things to keep itself relevant. It isn't wholly succeeding.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't provide some real services. It administers a lawyers retirement system, which is a real benefit and probably part of the reason a lot of people join it. It also provides some pretty good Continuing Legal Education, which it should given that CLE requirements are one of the things it has backed. And it still exercises some muscle in reviewing potential Federal judges and in certifying law schools.
But it also has cast about in movement politics, which has little to do with practicing law, and it's grown increasingly left wing, after having been quite right wing, over the years.
In the 50s the ABA sponsored "Law Day" which should have been a bit of a signal that it was ending the day of being fully practical. Law Day is an ignored Federal holiday that nobody gets off that occurs on May 1. The ABA sponsored it to point out that we're a society ruled by law, not one ruled by a proletariat mob like those folks celebrating May Day (you know who you are). Nobody celebrates Law Day anymore, although even when I was first practing the ABA sponsored some Law Day school stuff. By and large, however, the day is ignored. And it probably should be, not because we aren't a society ruled by laws, but because the day was a silly jingoistic effort.
At that time, the ABA was fairly obviously a right wing entity, but in recent years, the ABA has evolved into an urban-centric, left of center organization, that feels free to tell society what it thinks the law ought to be. For example, in the most recent issue of the ABA's magazine, there's an article by the president of the entity noting that lawyers are sworn to uphold the law, that the Second Amendment is part of the Constitution, and that therefore, the ABA is for it. It then goes on to argue that military style rifles should be banned. And to go further, the ABA has a "Gun Violence" standing committee.
That's not a legal position. That's a social position. Indeed, it's rather obviously contrary to the provision of the law. Indeed, its usually at this point in such a debate that people in favor of stricter gun laws start arguing the policy of their views, rather than the letter of the law. Having views one way or another is fine, but when policy is argued, it's argued because the advocate of that position knows that their argument isn't based on the what the law is, but what they want it to be.
I don't mean to suggest that lawyers can't have opinions on gun control. My point is that the ABA shouldn't. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the practice of law. By taking a position such as it is, it's taking one contrary to the law, and it's making a policy argument on what policy should be, which has nothing to do with the practice of law at all.
Likewise, the ABA also has a "Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity" committee. Those of a liberal political persuasion probably can convince themselves that this is a legal topic, but it isn't. It's a social topic that has zero to do with practicing law. The organization also has a number of committees that are based on racial topics. That might have something to do with the law, or probably did at one time, but currently in an era when minorities are extraordinarily well represented in the legal profession, and the majority of new law school graduates are women, the days when the ABA really needed to regard itself as the vanguard of equal protection are pretty much over.
The fact that the ABA has these types of committees and positions, in addition to the many truly practice sections it has, shows that it sees itself from having evolved from an organization concerned with a high standard of practice to one which now opines on what the law should be. There are any other number of organizations that do that, but the declining membership of the ABA shows, in my view, that its not going to retain its relevancy by attempting to be one.
The reason for that is fairly simply. It claims to be a nationwide bar association. What are bar organizations? Well, they're the collective group of those called to the bar in a certain location. In my state, every person admitted to the bar is a member of the state association whether they want to be or not, and every lawyer in the county is likewise a member of the county association. These associations have committees on the practice of law, the nomination of judges, and the rules of procedure and evidence. But they don't tell the legislature, or the citizens of the state, what the law ought to be. They limit themselves to the hard work of the nuts and bolts of the practice. So should the ABA. As an organization the ABA is going to become increasingly irrelevant if it continues to do this, as there's no earthly way that the organization can really claim to advance the views of most lawyers. At some point, and I suspect some point relatively soon, the organization will begin to loose influence in the areas that its legitimately concerned with.
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