ABA Membership

An article at law.com reports a decline of membership at the American Bar Association (ABA). http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202432537479 According to ILW.com’s editorial comment, ABA already represents less than half of all the attorneys in the United States. http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/digest/2009,0730.shtm#comment This drop in membership, if it is true, will further shrink the national organization and make it even less relevant.

The law.com article contributes the membership decline to the following factors: recession, ABA leadership posts being less prestigious now, ABA’s controversial positions in judicial reviews of federal judges, ABA’s failure to appeal to underrepresented groups, and the $399 annual membership dues for attorneys with 10 or more years of experience. These are all relevant factors. However, what the article at law.com did not point out is that there are now more and more specialized bar associations catered to the highly specialized areas of legal practice in the United States. These specialized bar associations are essential to attorneys that specialized in those areas and they, to some extent, compete for members against the ABA. For example, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is a specialty bar association. Any attorney who wants to practice immigration and nationality law competently and professionally in the U.S. cannot afford not to be a member of this organization. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the ABA. An attorney of course can belong to more than one bar association and many do belong to several. But how many bar association membership can an attorney afford, especially when most bar association membership dues are about $390 per annum and there are, in addition, separate state bar license/registration fees required to be able to practice. AILA’s national annual membership fee is about $395 and then there is the local chapter membership fee. State bar license/registration fee is about the same amount. If you are admitted to several jurisdictions like me, all these registration fees, license fees bar membership fees can really add up. If I have to choose between AILA and ABA, ABA would have to be dropped.

I canceled my ABA membership two years after graduating from law school mainly because I did not see any real benefits of being a member, save for the monthly journal that they sent me. I cannot recall attending any ABA Continuing Legal Education seminars as I find those offered by the specialty and local bar associations more relevant to my practice and generally they are more advanced, better in quality and less expensive. So, unless attorneys begin to see some significant benefits to them as members, ABA will continue to be irrelevant to the majority of attorneys in the U.S. and their membership will continue to decline.