“…Bernard Smith introduced me to Bill W. and it is fair to say that Bill introduced me to AA. What I saw when I looked at Alcoholics Anonymous in those early days was to me a most unusual sight: I saw a Conference that had responsibilities but no legal authority; a Foundation that had legal authority but no one against whom it could be enforced (the AA groups were autonomous); a Fellowship whose members, not the Fellowship, decided whether they were eligible for membership; a membership in which members were not required to pay dues or register or abide by what anybody in authority had to say; and, finally, I saw a charity organized for noble purposes but without any money to speak of and a tradition that would not permit it to accept money from the general public.
Nothing I had learned at law school prepared me for my first encounter with AA. Nothing. But Bill and Bernard Smith believed in AA and had given their lives over to AA; and that was good enough for me…” [Grapevine, November 1993]