Barbara Adell Curran
In Memoriam
Barbara Adell Curran
October 28, 1928 - August 25, 2010
Research Professor and Associate Executive Director Emerita
American Bar Foundation
On August 25, 2010, Barbara Adell Curran, whose association with the American Bar Foundation spanned five decades, passed away at the age of 82. Curran, who earned a J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1953 and a LL. M. from Yale University in 1961, was hired by ABF as staff attorney in 1961. In the course of her career at ABF, Curran conducted research in the areas of consumer credit legislation, legal services for the poor, legal needs of the public, and gender bias in the courts. From 1971 to 1977 Curran directed a comprehensive national study on the legal needs of the public. The study culminated in Curran's book, The Legal Needs of the Public (1977), which remains widely cited more than thirty years after its publication. In 1976 she was appointed as ABF's first female Associate Executive Director, a position she held until 1987. Curran also carried forward one of ABF's signature projects, The Lawyer Statistical Report (1985, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2005, with Clara Carson), a detailed demographic and geographic snapshot of the U.S. legal profession, based on information supplied by Martindale-Hubbell. Barbara Curran was a Life Patron Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.