The Istanbul Bar Association played a key safeguarding role in the 2019 recount election that culminated in the first electoral victory of the city after the-25 years-reign of the authoritarian Justice and Development party (JDP). The article showcases the bar’s leading role in Istanbul’s municipal electoral victory as attorneys mobilized and spearheaded the city’s local politics of resistance. Using mixed qualitative methods of ethnography, interviews and media and discourse analysis, our field research analyzes why and how the Bar adopted strategies to defend democracy. The article bridges urban and legal studies which have often talked past each other. We reveal and examine the recent shift of the Bar from a loyal pro-state organization to a democratic political actor that arduously resists the authoritarian rule. We argue that the Bar’s political shift from the legal space (courts) and legal discourse to urban resistance and democratic discourse transformed the relationship between the legal profession and the state. An in-depth look through the window of the Bar's transformation into an urban democratic political actor provides a key to win against the right-wing populist authoritarian regimes that have persistently ruled for extended time periods across the world.