When the Lawyers' Committee was created, its existence was a major change in how the bar and how local and state judiciaries were able to help oppressed racial minorities during the civil rights movement.

[2] The organization called on the private bar to bring its resources to bear on the major civil rights problems beleaguering the nation; some of its earliest leaders included Bernard G. Segal, Harrison Tweed, Lloyd Cutler, Cecil Burney, Berl Bernhard, and John Doyle.

[14] During a June 21, 1963, meeting at the White House, in the midst of the American civil rights movement, President John F. Kennedy suggested the formation of a group of lawyers to counter and reduce racial tensions by way of volunteer citizen actions.

[15] The Mississippi office of the organization opened on June 14, 1965, with a mission of getting the bar to take on the professional responsibility for leading the American civil rights movement and providing legal services where they would otherwise be unavailable.

[3] These events also prompted President Kennedy to call for private lawyers to do more to defend the civil rights of Black citizens, with Evers' assassination amounting to the last straw.

The Lawyers' Committee and partners sued, alleging that Maryland has failed to dismantle the vestiges of segregation from its prior de jure system of higher education.

The lawsuit was intended to dismantle affirmative action, and the Lawyers' Committee's clients—a group of diverse current, former, and potential students of Harvard—were granted special status to testify in court.