AP Photo/David Zalubowski In May, for the first time since I passed the bar exam almost four decades ago, I made the decision not to renew my annual American Bar Association membership when it expired.
Considered along with other recent ABA developments, my personal decision may be one more indication that the organization has finally tipped itself into irrelevance.
Historically, ABA membership was invaluable for attorneys seeking access to high-quality continuing legal education, career opportunities, networking, and practice support. Because of the resources available through the ABA, I forced myself in the past to ignore the organization’s repeated forays into political and social matters that were not consistent with my views or had nothing to do with my practice.
But over time, the value provided by the ABA in exchange for continually increasing membership dues has dwindled, whereas its politics have gotten louder and increasingly extreme.
That the ABA skews left politically is hardly news, given that as a professional class, lawyers tend to so as well. Favoring big government makes some sense from a self-interested perspective — the thicker the morass of laws imposed by the various levels of government, and the less certain their application, the greater the need to pay lawyers to manage the associated risks.
This decidedly liberal tendency has, however, undermined the ABA’s standing over recent decades. For example, the organization’s demonstrably ideological approach to evaluating federal judicial nominees led directly to one side of the political aisle simply dismissing its views altogether during the confirmation process.
As America has become increasingly polarized politically, in its amicus briefs and other public positions, the ABA has simply followed one of the two poles.
The ABA also regularly indulges in knee-jerk, hair-on-fire reactions to whatever the current president does. It gets tedious. Even on those 80-20 issues where the administration aligns with the views of the overwhelming majority of Americans — such as border security and immigration, gender identity, racial preferences and the like — the ABA reliably follows the small minority.
Attorneys should be well-suited to lead respectful, good-faith public debates about thorny issues faced by our country. However, the ABA has made no effort to promote such important conversations, thus missing an opportunity to make itself more broadly relevant.
The ABA also is now losing its longstanding chokehold on law school accreditation, along with eligibility for state bar admission. In January, the Supreme Courts of Texas and Florida ended their exclusive reliance on ABA accreditation of their states’ law schools. Alabama and Ohio took similar action last month. Tennessee may soon follow suit.
These state actions track with federal government actions. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission criticized the ABA for anticompetitive behavior in accreditation, arguing that its dominance has driven up the cost of legal education, restricted the supply of new lawyers, and imposed an elitist model on schools.
Not only has ABA’s politics grown louder and moved even further left, but very little of the stuff it churns out today relates to my litigation practice anymore. A recent ABA periodical featured articles on state laws restricting cat declawing and a judge who sings in a barbershop quartet. These topics may be meaningful to some lawyers, but I’m not among them.
Although the ABA’s litigation section — which represented only a fraction of my annual dues — occasionally provides useful articles, I can get the same (or a higher) level of support from numerous specialized litigation bar groups that are free of the ABA’s political and ideological baggage.
As a member, I was also spammed with a relentless stream of ads for products sold by the association, as well as from various expert witness services, AI and eDiscovery businesses, insurers, and vendors of other products and services in which I have no interest. Nonrenewal has helped clean out my inbox.
For me, the value of ABA membership no longer justifies the cost. And apparently, I’m not alone. ABA membership is now estimated at less than 15 percent of practicing attorneys. Like the ABA, the American Medical Association also has only about 20 percent of physicians belonging to it. Both organizations were captured by a narrow slice of the profession. They still purport to speak for all practitioners, but this is a mere illusion.
As its relevance fades, the ABA’s future does not look bright. The organization has allowed itself to fall out of touch with lawyers generally, and with most Americans. Alienating customers like me will ultimately prove to be a losing business model.
Don Daugherty is senior counsel for litigation for the Defense of Freedom Institute.
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