Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom

Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom is a community of LGBTQI+ legal professionals that envisions a world where LGBTQI+ people live with dignity and equality under the law.

Our mission is to lead our LGBTQI+ legal community through advocacy, justice, community empowerment, and professional development.

Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (BALIF) is the nation's oldest and largest association of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQI) persons in the field of law. Founded in 1980, BALIF represents its members’ interests in the wider San Francisco Bay Area. BALIF members and supporters include San Francisco Bay Area judges, lawyers, law students and legal workers.

BALIF was founded to encourage LGBTQI legal professionals to apply to become judges. At the time there were no openly LGBTQI judges. Today there are many!

BALIF also started the organization that grew to become the now-independent AIDS Legal Referral Panel, which has provided free and low-cost legal assistance to over 72,000 people since it was founded in 1983.

Today, BALIF’s mission has expanded. The group takes action on questions of law and justice that affect the LGBTQI community; strengthens professional and social ties among LGBTQI members of the legal profession; builds coalitions with other legal organizations to combat all forms of discrimination; promotes the appointment of LGBTQI attorneys to the judiciary, public agencies and commissions in the Bay Area; funds scholarships for LGBTQI laws students and fellowships for public interest lawyers working on LGBTQI issues, and provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and information of concern to members of the LGBTQI legal community. BALIF also submits amicus briefs in cases affecting the LGBTQI community, sponsors resolutions to the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations, provides LGBTQI-focused continuing legal education opportunities and endorses candidates for judicial offices and legal elected positions.