As a practicing attorney I can tell you that the state bar is essentially the mafia for attorneys. They are completely autonomous and self-regulated monopolies. The last thing you want to do is run afoul of these gangsters because they will ruin your career to take your livelihood. Somehow, no matter the state, the bar is dominated by raging Marxists...never figured it out.
“Somehow, no matter the state, the bar is dominated by raging Marxists...never figured it out.”
Of course, this is in contrast to the Estate Planning lawyers like me, who simply try to help people save tax dollars and save their families the trouble of an unsettled estate when they die. This is one of the only fields in the law that I feel comfortable being in - otherwise, the old joke of “What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.” is largely true. Having attended law school, and having worked with a fair number of lawyers both in and out of my firms over the years, I can tell you that the only difference between your run-of-the-mill asshole and most attorneys is that the attorneys in question have the proper sheepskin on the wall.
To directly answer your question of why the Bar is so Leftist, I truly believe that it is part of the master plan that Stalin and the NKVD initiated in this country (and elsewhere) 85-90 years ago: take over a nation from within. Control its education, its media and its laws, and you have won and the only question is how long it will take for that to be a fait accompli. THAT is what has happened to our nation and our profession.
How's this for a hypothesis?
1. Positions of power attract people who want power.
2. The goal of the Left is power for its own sake.
At the risk of descending into tl;dr territory, here's one of my favorite quotes from Orwell:
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites...We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end... The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
--O'Brien, in 1984, by George Orwell