The New York City Bar Association (formerly the Association of the Bar of the City of New York) was founded in 1870 as a voluntary professional organization for lawyers in New York City. It is the country's oldest bar association, and with over 24,000 members, continues to be one of its largest and most influential.
Origins
In the years following the end of the Civil War, the reputation of New York's legal profession was in decline. The New York state constitutional convention of 1846 had eliminated all property qualifications and significantly lowered educational requirements for admission to the bar, and had changed the state's system of choosing judges from an appointive to an elective one. By the 1860s in many districts restrictions on practicing law were minimal, and judges were too fearful of a popular electoral backlash to raise them significantly, resulting in a glut of under-qualified lawyers in the city's courts.
In addition, the profession was marred by a series of high-profile scandals and allegations of corruption linking prominent New York lawyers to the politicians of Tammany Hall and the questionable business practices of powerful industrialists. The Erie War, a two-year legal struggle over control of the Erie Railroad between shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and Erie board members Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk, was one of the most notorious incidents. The court battle implicated some of New York's leading lawyers and judges in widely criticized instances of corruption, vote buying, and obstructionist legal tactics. Respected lawyers retained by both parties—including Charles O'Conor and the noted legal reformer David Dudley Field—manipulated a confusing code of civil procedure to delay litigation and worked to appoint friends and political allies as receivers of valuable railroad stock, while other lawyers openly lobbied to bribe the New York State Legislature on their clients' behalf. New York judge George G. Barnard, before whom many of the arguments were heard, and who was a known associate of the infamous William "Boss" Tweed, was later impeached on corruption charges in part for rulings made during the case.
The spectacle was the catalyst for widespread calls to regulate the legal profession. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., lawyer and grandson of John Quincy Adams, criticized the affair in the American Law Review as an "extraordinary perversion of the process of law," and The New York Times called for a legal professional organization similar to those that already existed in London and Liverpool. "Such an organization is sadly needed in this City," the Times editorialized on June 20, 1869, "and if the respectable members consult their professional interests and expectations they will form one at an early date." In December 1869, prominent lawyers began circulating a "call for organization" of the legal profession in order to "sustain the profession in its proper position in the community, and…enable it to serve the public."
Early years
The "call to organization" became the basis for the formation of the New York City Bar Association. The two hundred initial signatories of the document — all prominent New York attorneys — met to draft the Association's constitution and bylaws on February 15, 1870 in a school house on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 28th Street. A year later, when the Association was legally incorporated, it had enrolled 493 members, representing nearly one in eight attorneys in New York City. Aside from the establishment of a law library, still considered the most comprehensive in the country, the Bar Association's purpose, as stated in its constitution, was legal reform: "cultivating the science of jurisprudence, promoting reforms in the law, facilitating and improving the administration of justice, elevating the standard of integrity, honor and courtesy in the legal profession, and cherishing the spirit of collegiality among the members thereof." Following the trials of the Tweed Ring, William M. Evarts, a well-known lawyer who had successfully defended President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment hearings and later served as Attorney General, was elected the Association's first president, a post which he would hold for nine years. Samuel Tilden, a national political leader and an outspoken critic of government corruption, was elected vice president.