Cover image for Stories from trailblazing women lawyers : lives in the law
Title:
Stories from trailblazing women lawyers : lives in the law
Author:
Norgren, Jill, author.
ISBN:
9781479805990
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
xiv, 287 pages ; 23 cm
Contents:
Cataloguing childhood influences -- The lure of law -- Law school : "You're taking a man's place" -- Work profiles : the post World War I generation -- Entr'acte : tales from the clothes closet -- The next generation : the path to private firm partnership -- Breaking new ground : law faculties and public interest law -- The new face of government -- "Judge cookie to you" : women lawyers join the judiciary -- Entr'acte : home, hearth, and the pursuit of a career -- The case of the century and other tales.
Abstract:
"In Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers, legal historian Jill Norgren curates the oral histories of one hundred extraordinary American women lawyers who changed the profession of law. Many of these stories are being told for the first time. As adults these women were on the front lines fighting for access to law schools and good legal careers. They challenged established rules and broke the law's glass ceiling. Norgren uses these interviews to describe the profound changes that began in the late 1960s, interweaving social and legal history with the women's individual experiences. In 1950, when many of the subjects of this book were children, the terms of engagement were clear: only a few women would be admitted each year to American law schools and after graduation their professional opportunities would never equal those open to similarly qualified men. Harvard Law School did not even begin to admit women until 1950. At many law schools, well into the 1970s, men told female students that they were taking a place that might be better used by a male student who would have a career, not babies. In 2005 the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession initiated a national oral history project named the Women Trailblazers in the Law initiative: One hundred outstanding senior women lawyers were asked to give their personal and professional histories in interviews conducted by younger colleagues. The interviews, made available to the author, permit these women to be written into history in their words, words that evoke pain as well as celebration, humor, and somber reflection"--Publisher's website