Bar Center General Information
Our mailing address is:
P.O. Box 231935
Tigard, OR
97281-1935
Our building is located at:
16037 SW Upper Boones Ferry Rd (Directions)
Tigard, OR
97224
Phone:
(503) 620-0222 or Inside Oregon: 1 (800) 452-8260
Facsimile:
(503) 684-1366
Email:
General OSB Inquiries: info@osbar.org
Website Content/Problem Inquiries: webmaster@osbar.org
Decisis/BarBooks Inquiries: legalpubs@osbar.org
The Staff Directory lists email and phone information for OSB staff.
View current Board of Governors members here.
Our Sitemap can aid you in locating
information on the website.
Oregon State Bar Mission
The mission of the Oregon State Bar is to serve justice and the public interest by promoting respect for the rule of law, by improving the quality of legal services, and by increasing access to justice.
Oregon State Bar Functions and Goals
- Regulate the Legal Profession and Improve the Quality of Legal Services.
– Our goal is to protect the public by ensuring competence and integrity and by promoting professionalism in the legal profession.
- Support the Judiciary and Improve the Administration of Justice.
– Our goal is to protect and advance the quality, integrity, and impartiality of the judicial system.
- Advance a Fair, Inclusive, and Accessible Justice System.
– Our goal is to foster trust in, respect for, understanding of, and access to the justice system.
Oregon State Bar Values
Diversity is the range and intersections of individual experiences, perspectives, and identities that collectively enrich our society.
Valuing diversity means the OSB embraces the differences of those we serve as well as the intersectionality and expression of such differences. It also means the OSB recognizes the diversity of paths into the legal profession, areas of practice, roles, geographic areas, and practice settings. Finally, valuing diversity signifies the commitment of OSB to equitable policies and safe environments for legal professionals and their clients.
Equity is enabling equal access to opportunities and resources.
Advancing equity means the OSB (a) strives to ensure public access to legal support, processes, and courts for clients of all financial means, identities, and backgrounds, and (b) works to provide affordable legal education, meaningful opportunities, reasonable workloads, and equal pay for legal practitioners.
Inclusion is ensuring everyone has access to opportunities to provide input and feels valued, respected, safe, and represented in decisions impacting them.
Fostering inclusion means the OSB works to challenge stereotypes, promotes well-being for all legal practitioners, welcomes and amplifies diverse perspectives, and considers the needs of those most affected by its decisions.
Justice is ensuring fair processes and outcomes for all people.
Centering justice means that the OSB works to (a) ensure fair, respectful, and humane administration and resolution of legal proceedings; (b) address, mitigate, and remove barriers impeding fair legal proceedings, including barriers specific to clients with particular identities and backgrounds; and (c) achieve fair legal outcomes for all.
Well-being is the cultivation of practices that sustain individuals physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, occupationally, intellectually, culturally, and spiritually.
Promoting well-being in the legal profession means the OSB creates structures and policies that support professional growth and fulfilment, encourage mutual support among colleagues, and affirm the importance of prioritizing well-being through work-life balance. It recognizes the disparate well-being impacts and needs of a diverse legal community and affirms a commitment to destigmatize help-seeking for all health challenges.
Transparency is the clear, accurate, honest, timely, and accessible communication of relevant information, ensuring that it is easily understood and that expectations are effectively managed for everyone who needs it.
Ensuring transparency means the OSB enhances communication by adhering to public record laws, proactively and frequently sharing information both internally and externally, offering accessible content in multiple formats and languages, and clearly explaining the reasoning behind its operational and programmatic decisions.
Humility is an ongoing process of learning, self-reflection, striving for self-improvement, acknowledging one's limitations, accepting that making mistakes is part of growth, avoiding the role of sole authority, and openly admitting mistakes.
Being humble means the OSB consistently seeks feedback, strives to improve, recognizes its limitations, acknowledges its positionality and perspective, values the expertise of partners and the community, and takes responsibility for its actions, including the outcome of its mistakes.
Compassion is the practice of holding space—for others and for ourselves—with curiosity, care, and a recognition of our shared humanity, autonomy, and dignity.
Valuing compassion means the OSB creates opportunities for different viewpoints and lived experiences, recognizes emotions, seeks to understand perspective and impact, listens attentively to all its constituents, recognizes power differentials, and collaboratively partners with its constituents. It invites us to engage with differing perspectives not as obstacles, but as opportunities for connection, understanding, and growth.
Innovation is embracing novel approaches without being bound by tradition, with a willingness to make and learn from mistakes.
Catalyzing innovation means the OSB explores new practice areas and new approaches to addressing issues in collaboration with impacted communities.
Oregon State Bar
The Oregon State Bar (OSB) was established in 1935 by the Oregon Legislative Assembly to license and discipline lawyers, regulate the practice of law and provide a variety of services to bar members and the public. The bar is a public corporation and an instrumentality of the Oregon Judicial Department, funded by membership and program fees.
Membership
The OSB has more than 15,000 active members. Approximately half of our members engage in the private practice of law. The rest work primarily in government, corporate and business settings. Nearly 6,000 of our active members are women. More than 2,500 reside in a state other than Oregon.
Governance
An eighteen-member volunteer Board of Governors oversees the activities of the OSB. Fourteen board members are lawyers, elected by the membership by geographic region. The other four board members are public (non-lawyer) members appointed based on their areas of interest and expertise. The Board of Governors has established numerous committees and interests group to advise and make recommendations to the board on matters involving the legal profession and justice system.
The OSB House of Delegates serves as the representative assembly of the membership, voting on proposed changes to rules, membership fees and other matters. It has more than 200 members, most of whom are elected by geographic region. Other delegates represent OSB Sections and local bar associations, and seven public members are appointed by the Board of Governors on a regional basis. The House of Delegates meets annually.
The Oregon Supreme Court has authority over appointments to the Disciplinary Board and the Board of Bar Examiners. Members of these boards are also volunteers, and receive staff and administrative support from the OSB.
The OSB Executive Director oversees bar operations, managing a staff of approximately 90 people and a $15 million annual operating budget.
