New York County Lawyers Association

About

The New York County Lawyers Association was founded in 1908, and at the time of its founding, the only existing bar association in Manhattan precluded some lawyers from membership by virtue of ethnicity, religion, gender and race. Although other factors contributed to the atmosphere that produced the new association, none was as strong as "selective membership." Not only were large groups of lawyers denied affiliation with a bar association, but independent perspectives on the judicial system were also curtailed by the reluctance of a few large law firms to facilitate change. Throughout its history, NYCLA's bedrock principles have been the inclusion of all who wish to join and the active pursuit of legal system reform. In 1907, a group of lawyers gathered in Carnegie Hall to address the prospect of forming a bar group where heritage and politics were not obstacles to inclusion. The bar leaders who met were determined to create, in the words of Hon. Joseph H. Choate, who would become president in 1912, "the great democratic bar association of the City [where] any attorney who had met the rigid standards set up by law for admission to the bar should, by virtue of that circumstance, be eligible for admission." Just a few months later, April 21, 1908, 145 "attorneys or counsellors of the Supreme Court of the State of New York in active practice, residing or having offices in New York County" officially incorporated the New York County Lawyers Association. The New York County Lawy

Service area

Serves the business city