1 President Carter's Attack on Lawyers, President Spann's Response, and Chief Justice Burger's Remarks, 64 A.B.A.J. 840 (1978); “Real” Jimmy Carter Sees Red; Lawyers Get Gored, 64 A.B.A.J. 811 (1978); Warren E. Burger, The Special Skills of Advocacy: Are Specialized Training and Certification of Advocates Essential to Our System of Justice? 42 Fordham L. Rev. 227 (1973); N.Y. Times, May 9, 1977, § B at 9; Dorothy Linder Maddi, Trial Advocacy Competence: The Judicial Perspective, 1978 A.B.F. Res. J. 105.Google Scholar

2 Jerold S. Auerbach, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), and Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar

3 In this article a distinction is drawn between elites and elitism. Suzanne Keller broadly defines elites as those minorities that are set apart from the rest of society by their achieved preeminence in one or more of the various social domains, such as positions of authority in large organizations (business or civic, for example), professional and occupational achievement, political power, and the like. More generally in empirical studies of elites, elites are characteristically identified in three ways: (1) in terms of positions, where leaders of powerful organizations such as government agencies, corporations, and numerous other institutions are designated as elites because of their positions of authority in those organizations; (2) in terms of reputation, where individuals are thought to be either generally powerful on a range of issues or influential on a restricted number of issues; and (3) in terms of decision making, where individuals are identified as either making important decisions or shaping the agenda from which those decisions are made (Suzanne Keller, Beyond the Ruling Class: Strategic Elites in Modern Society (New York: Random House, 1963), and Albert Ellis, Elites in 5 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 26 (n.p.: Macmillan Co. & The Free Press, 1968)). We are concerned here with positional elites, 219 lawyers who have served on the board of the CBA from 1950 through 1974, although of course these elites have considerable decision-making power as well. Elitism is a doctrine or ideology maintaining that political power in a given society or organization should be held or is inevitably held by a small, exclusive group of self-selecting individuals with a homogeneous set of attributes (such as those who are Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and wealthy) who make decisions on behalf of, but not directly at the bidding of, the general body of individuals affected by their decisions. It is therefore possible to have an elite, such as a popularly elected body of decision makers, which does not subscribe to elitist doctrines.Google Scholar

4 It does not follow from this argument either that the interests of a bar elite, the bar, and the public are always incompatible or that a more heterogeneous and responsive professional association or elite will follow policies more explicitly in the public interest.Google Scholar

5 Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 265–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973); Maxwell Bloomfield, Law vs. Politics: The Self-Image of the American Bar (1830–1860), 12 Am. J. Legal Hist. 306–14 (1968); Gary B. Nash, The Philadelphia Bench and Bar, 1800–1861, 7 Comp. Stud. in Soc'y & Hist. 203 (1965).Google Scholar

6 Roscoe Pound, The Lawyer from Antiquity to Modern Times with Particular Reference to the Development of Bar Associations in the United States 221–42 (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1953).Google Scholar

7 Friedman, supra note 5, at 561–64; Herman Kogan, The First Century: The Chicago Bar Association 1875–1974, at 15–17, 37–40 (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1974).Google Scholar

8 Auerbach, supra note 2, at 94–96.Google Scholar

9 Id. at 120.Google Scholar

10 A comprehensive discussion of the founding and early development of the integrated bar movement is found in Dayton McKean, The Integrated Bar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963).Google Scholar

11 Kogan, supra note 7, at 15–17, 51–53; Edward M. Martin, The Rôe of the Bar in Electing the Bench in Chicago 153–72 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936).Google Scholar

12 Jerome Carlin, Lawyers on Their Own: A Study of Individual Practitioners in Chicago 175–84 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

13 John P. Heinz, Edward O. Laumann, Charles L. Cappell, Terence C. Halliday, & Michael H. Schaalman, Diversity, Representation, and Leadership in an Urban Bar: A First Report on a Survey of the Chicago Bar, 1976 A.B.F. Res. J. 717, 740–44 (hereinafter cited as Report on Chicago Bar Survey; the survey alone cited as Chicago Bar Survey).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Dover, 1959); Seymour Martin Lipset, Martin A. Trow, & James S. Coleman, Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union 3–16 (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1956). See also Seymour Martin Lipset's Introduction to the 1962 Free Press (New York) edition of Michels's study.Google Scholar

15 Michels, supra note 14, at pt. 1, chs. 5–10.Google Scholar

16 Id. at pt. 2, chs. 1–6; pt. 6, ch. 4.Google Scholar

17 Lipset et al., supra note 14.Google Scholar

18 Id.; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics ch. 12 (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., 1963).Google Scholar

19 Corinne Lathrop Gilb, Hidden Hierarchies: The Professions and Government pt. 3, ch. 4. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).Google Scholar

20 It is clear, of course, that a voluntary association such as a bar association may find its effectiveness negated by such a heterogeneity of interests, a problem raised explicitly about the Chicago Bar Association (and by implication about other comprehensive associations) by the Report on the Chicago Bar Survey, supra note 13. Thus comprehensive bar associations face what Halliday has called “the paradox of organizational inclusiveness”-their massive size and substantial resources, which might lend bar associations great influence, fail to result in the exercise of that potential influence because of an internal dissension that allows no strong consensus position on anything that is controversial within the bar at large to emerge within the organized bar. Thus the critical problem facing professional associations is how to transcend this organizational paradox; for sociologists and political scientists, the problem is ascertaining the conditions under which transcending it is possible. An extended treatment of this paradox, as it pertains to the postwar policies of the Chicago Bar Association, is found in Terence C. Halliday, Parameters of Professional Influence: Policies and Politics of the Chicago Bar Association, 1945–70 ch. 3 (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1979).Google Scholar

21 Gilb, supra note 19, at 128; Oliver Garceau, The Political Life of the American Medical Association (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941).Google Scholar

22 A useful discussion of tokenism is found in Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women, 82 Am. J. Soc. 965 (1977). Kanter also has a notion of dominance similar to that employed in our analysis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 The relevance of this criterion to professional associations is something of an open question. In society at large, rewards of political leadership can be great, so much so that the costs of open and competitive elections are, for many people, worth the investment. In professional associations, however, the rewards of leadership may not be commensurate with the costs incurred by a successful professional who stands in a competitive election for office but is publicly repudiated through de-feat. It is common knowledge, therefore, that some distinguished lawyers are requested to stand for office in the organized bar because their eminence in the profession will lend greater prestige to the professional association. Such leaders might not stand, however, if they had to face open election. In short, the alternatives seem straightforward: a professional association may have open elections, but in so doing it may discourage some distinguished professionals from joining its leadership; or the association may appoint or coopt its leadership, but in eschewing elections it may fall prey to the consequences discussed in the conclusion of this article.Google Scholar

24 A general description of the 1974 survey is contained in the Report, supra note 13, at 719–23.Google Scholar

25 Throughout this article we refer to the leadership of the CBA as the CBA elite or the organized bar elite, a designation consistent with the positional definition of elite discussed in note 3 supra. We recognize, however, that the organized bar elite in Chicago is only one of several elites within the profession. While no systematic analysis of legal elites has yet been attempted, we might count among professional elites the senior partners of the most prestigious law firms, the most outstanding litigators and lawyers in given legal specialties, senior judges, influential corporate counsel, and the like. For a discussion of another legal elite in Chicago see Jeffrey S. Slovak, Attorneys for Corporate Actors: A Professional Elite in Collective Decision-Making (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1979), and id., Working for Corporate Actors: Social Change and Elite Attorneys in Chicago, 1979 A.B.F. Res. J. 465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Kogan, supra note 7, at 16–17, 39, and 15–40 generally.Google Scholar

27 Halliday, supra note 20, at 43; Martin, supra note 11, at 160.Google Scholar

28 Halliday, supra note 20, at 57; Martin, supra note 11, at 160.Google Scholar

29 Halliday, supra note 20, fig. 1 at 44, table 3 at 88–89.Google Scholar

30 The data presented in tables 1–4 are aggregated into five-year periods. Five cohorts were constructed, based on the date of entry into the work force: prior to 1955, 1955–59, 1960–64, etc. In this article, we are primarily concerned with obtaining estimates of the overall profile of the bar, the can, and the Board of Managers during a given period and not with comparisons among the cohorts or with individual-level analysis of occupational mobility. Therefore, the periods are cumulative aggregations of data; any lawyer entering during a certain period is included in all the subsequent periods. It is presumed that no change in the values of father's occupation, law school, college, and originsoccurs over this period. Thus all changes observed in the distributions of these variables result from new lawyers entering the profession at the later dates. For the variable type of practice, each lawyer was assigned to the category in which he appeared at the close of any five-year period, thus including individual-level changes as well as shifts in the structure of entry opportunities. Board members appear only during the periods in which they served on the board and, because most terms are for a minimum of two years, may appear in more than one period. This procedure permits us to reconstruct, as accurately as possible with the data at hand, the profile of the bar and the board during each period and, by further identifying those lawyers who were CBA members during each period, to make the comparisons among the bar, the CRA, and the board over time.Google Scholar

It is possible that had the profiles been constructed from five samples, one each drawn at the close of each period, the distributions along the various attributes might have been somewhat different from those we have presented. But we are relatively confident that we are not overstating trends and differences. Our estimates of the various distributions at the earlier periods will be biased to the ex-tent that lawyers across the categories considered were exposed to different attrition and mortality rates. If lawyers grouped in one category had a higher mortality rate than those lawyers grouped in a second category, a construction of the proportion of the second group's lawyers in an earlier period based on a later sample would overestimate this figure since more of them had survived. We can speculate that we may be underestimating the percentage of solo lawyers for the earlier periods since they most likely would have been older on the average than their counterparts in firms and, therefore, would have had higher rates of mortality making them less likely to have appeared in the 1974 sample. This would lead us to understate rather than to overstate the trend away from solo practice. To the extent that the retirement rates of lawyers at 65 is higher for salaried lawyers than for solo and firm lawyers, our estimates of the percentages of salaried lawyers may be lower than the actual figures one could have observed in the earlier periods.Google Scholar

31 Martin, supra note 11, at 156; Report on Chicago Bar Survey, supra note 13, at 723–25.Google Scholar

32 Peter M. Blau & Otis Dudley Duncan, The American Occupational Structure ch. 3 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967).Google Scholar

33 At least three reasons may be advanced for the apparently low frequency of corporate lawyers on the board. First, this finding may reflect a measurement problem. We have identified as corporate lawyers those attorneys who have served on corporate law committees of major bar associations. But many lawyers who have memberships on other committees, such as those concerning civil litigation, will be corporate lawyers under a different label. Thus the overlap between lawyers identified as corporate lawyers and those identified as litigators may account in part for the discrepancy. Second, local bar associations, which tend to focus more thoroughly on state than on federal law, may be less relevant to certain areas of corporate practice concerned primarily with federal regulations and federal law. Third, positions of leadership and membership on bar association committees can be rewarding for lawyers not only in their educational benefits but also in contacts that are useful for business and for lawyers aspiring to the bench in an elective judicial system. It may well be the case that for corporate lawyers, often the most prestigious and financially prosperous section of the legal community, participation in local bar association activities will not be sufficiently rewarding to justify the investment in time and effort which membership may demand.Google Scholar

34 The historical material in this and the following sections is drawn from Halliday, supra note 20, ch. 2, and the By-Laws of the Chicago Bar Association, 1907, 1917.Google Scholar

35 Report of Election Committee, 14 Chi. B. Ass'n Rec. 186 (1931); Result of Annual Election, 17 Chi. B. Rec. 256 (1936); and The Moaning of the Bar: Anonymous Complaint, 16 Chi. B. Rec. 263 (1935).Google Scholar

36 Garceau, supra note 21, and Michels, supra note 14.Google Scholar

37 By informal convention, we refer simply to a process whereby the leadership of the organized bar prescribes terms of office or the sequence in which offices are held for certain positions on the board, but these conventions are not formal; that is, they are not written into the constitution or the by-laws of the Association. For the purposes of our analysis, we have slightly oversimplified the by-law provisions on turnover. A 1965 amendment to the by-laws provided that the presidency could thereafter be automatically filled without election by the previous first vice president. However, the board would have the option whether to allow automatic succession or whether to fill the presidency by open election. Because the board does have this option, we have treated its apparent decision to opt for automatic succession more as a convention than as a formal constitutional mandate.Google Scholar

38 By-Laws of the Chicago Bar Association, 1917, 1935, 1943; A Birthday Present, 7 Chi. B. Ass'n Rec. 1 (Dec. 1923); Charles M. Thomson, The President Says: A New Home for the Bar Association, 18 Chi. B. Rec. 44–45 (1936).Google Scholar

39 Martin, supra note 11. We also appreciate the comments on judicial evaluation offered by John F. McBride, Executive Director of the CBA.Google Scholar

40 By-Laws of the Chicago Bar Association, 1907, 1943; A Sensible Compromise, 5 Chi. B. Ass'n Rec. 5 (Nov. 1921); and Prohibition Referendum, 15 Chi. B. Rec. 18 (1931).Google Scholar

41 Halliday, supra note 20, chs. 7–8.Google Scholar

42 Report on Chicago Bar Survey, supra note 13, table 9 at 735.Google Scholar

43 Relationships among these attributes in the bar and in the organized bar elite respectively have been analyzed and are reported and discussed in: Charles L. Cappell, A Legal Elite: Investigations in the Structure of Decision Making and the Production of Law (Ph.D. diss. in progress, University of Chicago), and Charles L. Cappell & Terence C. Halliday, A Legal Elite: Status-Class Composition (working paper, American Bar Foundation). See also Carlin, supra note 12, and id., Lawyers' Ethics: A Survey of the New York City Bar (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1966); Jack Ladinsky, Careers of Lawyers, Law Practice, and Legal Institutions, 28 Am. Soc. Rev. 47 (1963); Edward O. Laumann & John P. Heinz, Specialization and Prestige in the Legal Profession: The Structure of Deference, 1977 A.B.F. Res. J. 155.Google Scholar

44 For a detailed treatment of this development in the history of the Chicago Bar Association, see Halliday, supra note 20, ch. 3.Google Scholar

45 Section B1 supra.Google Scholar

46 Report on Chicago Bar Survey, supra note 13, at 771–75.Google Scholar

47 Michael Powell, Anatomy of a Counter-Bar Association: The Chicago Council of Lawyers, 1979 A.B.F. Res. J. 501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Id. at 508–14, 517–18, 526, 531–34.Google Scholar

49 Id. at 511, 514, 516–17.Google Scholar