National Lawyers Guild

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA), in protest of that organization's then exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first predominantly white US bar association to admit minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities, to support and encourage lawyers otherwise "isolated and discouraged", and to help create a "united front" against fascism.