Why I quit the ABA: It’s no longer worth it

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........

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