The New York City Bar Association on Friday endorsed a ballot initiative to be voted upon statewide in the general election that would greatly expand the jurisdiction of the city’s Civil Court system by allowing to it decide legal claims for up to $50,000.

But the influential bar group, which has about 25,000 lawyer-members, emphasized in its published report addressing five general-election ballot initiatives overall, that if the Civil Court system’s jurisdiction is expanded the state court system must add judges and support staff to the Civil Court, which it said already has fewer judges than elected to that court because of certain state court system “structural problems.”