AFL Mission Statement--Identifying Lawyer Excellence—Informing Client Choice.

 We are not a referral agency; we are very much a validation authority.

Arizona population ranks 16^th in the nation. Maricopa County is the 4^th most populous county, and Phoenix is America’s 6^th largest city. Our lawyers, legislators, judges, law professors, and elected officials spend every day making, interpreting, and using the law because it impacts almost every aspect of daily life. Our courts are recognized as among the most efficient in America. Our bar associations and professional groups are noted and admired throughout the country. And so too should we recognize and profile those lawyers whose high skills, integrity and noteworthy achievements have elevated them to membership in Arizona’s Finest Lawyers.

High achievement, like high office, comes at a price. The price is public service, scrutiny, and observance. By gathering substantially all of the best lawyers, judges, and teachers in the state under the AFL banner, our biographical databases will become a meaningful structure to identify and advance excellence in lawyering, judging, policymaking, and statesmanship. We serve many clients, public and private, some for pay, and many pro bono. Our state, our clients, and our profession will be best served when AFL’s biographical database becomes the tour de force in Arizona legal circles. 

However, recognition in a biographical database is not enough. Importantly, AFL must ultimately achieve a clear public good. AFL’s Executive Board is committed to creating and endowing a non-profit foundation that will make all of us proud of what we are undertaking. We intend to be the prime mover in validating lawyer excellence in the broadest sense. By doing that we can advance the larger, non-profit mission—advancing the Arizona Rule of Law conceptually, and in practical ways that can be measured, tested, and felt by those we all serve—the people of Arizona.