Bar Association of San Francisco

The Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF) was established in 1872 as a nonprofit legal membership organization that provides San Francisco legal professionals with networking, educational and pro bono opportunities in order to better serve the community.^[1]

BASF is located in the financial district at 301 Battery Street, between Sacramento and Clay Streets, on the third floor of the Bently Reserve building.^[2] Included in the National Register of Historic Places, the Bently Reserve, formerly the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, was built in 1924.

Structure

BASF is governed by an elected Board of Directors.^[3] In addition, BASF currently has 27 sections and six committees, each dedicated to either a particular, substantive area of the law or to issues such as access to justice and the administration of justice.

BASF’s Barristers Club, the division serving attorneys with under ten years of experience, has its own board of directors.^[4]

Task Force Reports

BASF has produced a number of reports and publications on the legal workplace through various task forces. These include:

Diversity

BASF has established numerous diversity programs and initiatives within the organization. These include:

The Diversity Pipeline

BASF has also focused its efforts on diversity in the profession by pumping up the "diversity pipeline." The diversity pipeline is an effort to respond to the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among lawyers by introducing minority children, teens, and college students to the legal profession.^[9]

BASF's pipeline efforts include surveys, conferences, initiatives and programs that include:

Marriage Fairness

In 2008 BASF organized a Marriage Fairness Task Force to respond to what it believes are the attempts being made to attack the Supreme Court and to rewrite the California constitution and deny Californians the marriage rights currently protected by the constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court.^[11]^[12]

Community Programs

BASF founded the Volunteer Legal Services Program (VLSP) in 1977. It began as a small pro bono project, but is now one of the largest nonprofit providers of free legal and social services to low income individuals and families.^[13]

VLSP Projects include:

Family Law Project
Eviction Defense Project
Housing Negotiation Project
Community Organization Representation Project (CORP)
Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP)
Consumer Project
Tort Defense Project
Legal Advice and Referral Clinic (LARC)
Interpreter Project
Family Law Assisted Self-Help (FLASH) Project
Social Services Project^[14]

In addition, to VLSP, the BASF Foundation serves as the charitable arm of BASF. Its stated mission:^[15]

To change lives by:

Leveraging the legal aid resources of our community

Supporting diversity in the legal profession

Providing educational support to our Bay Area youth

The BASF Foundation serves as the main conduit for all of BASF's fundraising activities that help fund the public service, pro bono and community programs, described above, that BASF provides.

Finally, BASF also established the Lawyer Referral and Information Service(LRIS) in 1947. LRIS offers legal assistance to clients from a panel of experienced lawyers.