MBA presidents tackle social issues in 1970s

In the early 1970s, the Massachusetts Bar Association was growing in a number of ways, including the number of members, the number and type of professional staff, and the scope of its mission.

Starting in the late 1960s, the MBA had begun taking a role in a number of societal issues, including the exposure of brutal conditions that the criminally insane were living in at Bridgewater State Hospital by President Paul A. Tamburello (1966-68).

As Robert J. Brink wrote in Fiat Justitia, A History of the Massachusetts Bar Association 1910-1985, "The profession itself had matured enough that the MBA could successfully begin shifting its focus from a narrow interest in the internal problems of the legal community to a concern with the law's efforts on society as a whole."

The MBA did not fail to assert itself on a number of legal debates, including proposals for lawyer recertification, defending the tort system against legislative efforts, merit selection of judges and court reform.

During the term of Frederick G. Fisher Jr. (1973-74), two important programs were launched: the Fee Arbitration Board and the Lawyer Referral Service. Those factored into the American Bar Association awarding the MBA its third Award of Merit in seven years.

It was also a time of evolution in the MBA's leadership. Although the MBA had always welcomed women and minority lawyers, 1976 saw the first woman run for the office of president, Colette Manoil.

She failed in her challenge of the nominated candidate, Raymond J. Kenney Jr., but, as Brink noted in Fiat Justitia, "Manoil may have lost the presidency in 1976, but, fighting in the MBA's mainstream arena, she won an important round in the continuing struggle of women to gain equal status with men in the legal profession."

It would be another decade before the MBA saw its first woman president, but the end of the decade did see another significant first when Wayne A. Budd became the association's first black president. Not only that, he was also its youngest president, and the first black bar association president in the country.