The Committee was established in 1969 to provide pro bono legal services in significant civil rights cases. The first board of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee believed that "the poor and the black can become full and equal participants in our economic and political systems only when they achieve the power to deal on equal terms with public and private institutions. An essential element of that power is access to expert legal resources." From 1969 to 1970, federal judge David S. Tatel was a director of the Committee.