The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary national bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States, and not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession. As of fiscal year 2017, the ABA had 194,000 dues-paying members, constituting approximately 24.4% of American attorneys. In 1979, half of all lawyers in the U.S. were members of the ABA. In 2016, about one third of the 1.3 million practicing lawyers in the U.S. were included in the ABA membership of 400,000, with figures largely unchanged in 2024; Included are "about 150,000 paying members" for 2024–2025, according to Reuters.
The organization's national headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois, with a branch office in Washington, D.C.. The association is affiliated with the law, legal, and professional research sponsoring organization the American Bar Foundation.
The ABA was founded on August 21, 1878, in Saratoga Springs, New York, by 75 lawyers from 20 states and the District of Columbia. According to the ABA website:
The legal profession as we know it today barely existed at that time. Lawyers were generally sole practitioners who trained under a system of apprenticeship. There was no national code of ethics; there was no national organization to serve as a forum for discussion of the increasingly intricate issues involved in legal practice.
The purpose of the original organization, as set forth in its first constitution, was "the advancement of the science of jurisprudence, the promotion of the administration of justice and a uniformity of legislation throughout the country...."
In 1918, the first women were admitted to the ABA – Judge Mary Belle Grossman of Cleveland and Mary Florence Lathrop of Denver.
Prior to 1943, the ABA did not knowingly admit any African-American members and its discrimination led to the formation in 1937 of the National Lawyers Guild. The ABA denied admittance to Francis E. Rivers in 1943 and several prominent members threatened to quit as a result and the organization was finally integrated.
The ABA appointed Jill Wine-Banks as its first woman executive director, who served from 1987 to 1990. Roberta Cooper Ramo was the first female president of the ABA from 1995 to 1996. On August 4, 2015, Paulette Brown became the first woman of color president of the ABA.
In 2016 ABA introduced a new ethics rule prohibiting attorneys from using sexist, racist and condescending terms. The rule also prohibits attorneys from engaging in discrimination based on age in the conduct of bar association activities.
On May 1, 2019, the ABA launched a new membership model aimed at reversing declining membership and revenue. As mentioned in "Criticisms", below, and despite ABA's own rule against age-discriminatory conduct, the "experience-based" component of the ABA dues structure is a proxy for age discrimination, imposing significantly higher dues on lawyers as their years in practice increase.
2025 federal lawsuit and member targeting by the Trump administration
In 2025, the ABA, as well as some members of the organization, became targets of the Trump administration. On February 11, with tens of millions of dollars in its USAID and U.S. State Department funding frozen by Executive Order 14169, issued on Trump's first day following re-election, the ABA and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit which asserts that the administration's actions were arbitrary and a capricious violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. The case, Global Health Council v. Trump, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and assigned to Judge Amir Ali. Two days later he issued a temporary restraining order, allowing some foreign assistance programs to resume.
On February 14, Federal Trade Commission chair Andrew N. Ferguson ordered his roster of political appointees not to renew memberships in the ABA, hold any ABA position, or attend any ABA events.
Following a February 25, 2025, memo revoking security clearances for the law firm that had assisted Special Counsel Jack Smith by the president, on February 28, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to the ABA saying that the diversity requirements of Standard 206 of the Standards of Rules and Procedure for Approval of Law Schools conflicts with Chief Justice John Roberts' 2023 decision that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and violates civil law, while threatening to rescind ABA accreditation authority of U.S. law schools.
The ABA released a statement on March 3, 2025, encouraging members to challenge Trump's actions that it perceives to undermine the courts and the legal profession, with more than 50 smaller bar associations joining the call for solidarity. While the ABA strongly condemned the Trump administration's actions; on March 25, Reuters reported that "President Donald Trump expanded his attacks on major U.S. law firms" in issuing his fourth executive order targeting a law firm in two months.
On June 16, 2025, Susman Godfrey, an EO-targeted firm that subsequently prevailed in court, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the ABA alleging that executive orders issued against law firms, and other actions, reflect a "law firm intimidation policy" of the Trump administration, which aims "to intimidate and coerce law firms and lawyers to refrain from challenging the President or his Administration in court, or from even speaking publicly in support of policies or causes that the President does not like." The ABA issued a statement, in which President Bay said, "There has never been a more urgent time for the ABA to defend its members, our profession and the rule of law itself". On August 11, 2025, the ABA adopted a resolution in opposition to White House efforts designed to punish "lawyers, law firms, or other organizations for representing or having represented any particular client or cause disfavored by the government."
On July 20, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) requested that the court disqualify Susman Godfrey from representation of the ABA, citing a conflict of interest due to the firm having been targeted by a Trump executive order #14263, which it had successfully challenged, potentially making its lawyers key witnesses. The DOJ also subpoenaed 14 law firms, including Susman Godfrey, that were each targeted by, or had reached agreements with, the White House in 2025, seeking documents and depositions in its defense of the Trump administration.
The ABA adopts "policy" (organizational positions) on certain legislative and national issues, as voted on by its elected, 589-member House of Delegates. Its board of governors, with 44 members, has the authority to act for the ABA, consistent with previous action of the House of Delegates, when the House is not in session.