The History of Women Lawyers in Texas

The following is the Prologue to Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas by Betty Trapp Chapman.

The history of women lawyers in Texas is a powerful story of women’s search for equality and autonomy in American society. Filled with hardship and rejection, it also is marked by achievement and success. Our story begins in 1902 when a woman petitioned the courts in west Texas to grant her a license to practice law. It follows women lawyers over a century as they learned the law, established professional careers, integrated state bars, and tried to balance traditional responsibilities of private lives with demands of new careers.

More than any other profession women sought to enter, law was the most closed to them. Women were more readily accepted in other professions because of their womanly natures. Female physicians could treat other women, thus preserving female modesty. Teachers merely extended the role of mothers as moral instructors of children. Even as ministers, women could build on beliefs about women’s spiritual nature. But there was no way to feminize the meaning of being a lawyer.

The legal profession was especially difficult to integrate because sexual discrimination was rooted in the legal system. Our nation’s laws were patriarchal in intent and form, favoring the masculine gender while discriminating against women. Under the common law adopted in the United States, once a woman married she lost the right to inherit property on her own, to enter into contracts in her name, and to independently obtain goods and service. Decisions about her property and her style of living belonged exclusively to her husband. While single women did not face these particular constraints, they, too, faced gender discrimination when a woman’s proper role in society was addressed. Moreover, since the legal profession was dominated by men, women had to access it through male-controlled institutions: courts, bar associations, law schools, and law firms.

It is ironic that the figure representing the law is a woman. Lady Justice—Justitia, the Roman Goddess of Justice—is a symbol of the American system of justice and the ideals it embodies. Typically depicted blindfolded, wearing flowing robes and holding a sword and the scales of justice, the image has since antiquity symbolized the fair and equal administration of justice without prejudice or favor. But what of women in our judicial system throughout the country?

Margaret Brent was the first woman known to have acted as an attorney in America. The daughter of a wealthy landowner who had emigrated from England to St. Mary’s Parish, Maryland, she was a cousin of Lord Baltimore. He appointed her as counsel to the governor, even though she did not have a license from either the crown or the colony to act as an attorney. Brent shattered all the restrictions facing seventeenth century women by appearing in public trials. Because the colonists did not quite know what to call such a unique woman, they frequently addressed her, in person and in court, as Gentleman Margaret Brent. Court records show that her name figured in 124 cases in eight years.

Despite Brent’s legal prowess, it would be more than two centuries before a woman was licensed to practice law in America. Arabella Mansfield, valedictorian of her class at Iowa Wesleyan College and a skilled debater, read law in her brother’s office and applied to the Iowa Bar in 1869. Mansfield was allowed to take the bar examination even though the procedure was supposedly limited to “any white male person” who had adequately studied law.3 Mansfield scored so high on the examination that the court was urged to admit her “because in her examination she has given the very best rebuke possible to the imputation that ladies cannot qualify for the practice of law.” Arabella Mansfield thus became the first woman recognized as a lawyer by a state bar association. Not every state, however, was as progressive as Iowa.

In the same year that Mansfield was admitted in Iowa, Myra Bradwell applied to the State Bar of Illinois. Bradwell had worked in her husband’s law office before the Civil War. She founded and edited the Chicago Legal News, the most important legal newspaper of the West and Midwest. After her application was received, Bradwell received a polite letter from the clerk of the Illinois Supreme Court informing her that as a married woman she had no legal right to contract in her own name. Thus, she could not be admitted to the practice of law. Bradwell then petitioned the Illinois court for reconsideration as she publicly protested its decision in her newspaper. The Illinois Supreme Court again denied Bradwell admission. The court rejected her due to “the disability imposed by your married condition.” Bradwell then filed a writ of error to the United States Supreme Court. The decision, which was not rendered for nearly two years, once again ruled against Bradwell because of her gender. Finally in 1890 the Illinois Supreme Court granted the aspiring lawyer her license to practice law. Bradwell, by this time more concerned with the rejection of women in the legal profession than practicing law herself, placed her energies into campaigning for expanded rights for women using the Chicago Legal News as her pulpit.

The state of Wisconsin, like Illinois, had a closed mind about accepting women as lawyers. In 1875 Lavinia Goodell, who had been licensed as a lawyer at the local level and had a successful practice in Janesville, appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court when the ruling on one of her cases was reversed. Since only members of the state bar were allowed to address the supreme court and since only men were members of the bar, Goodell was not allowed to appear before Wisconsin’s highest court. She prepared all of the briefs and had a male lawyer represent her. Goodell argued in her brief that references to “he” and “him” were obviously meant to refer to women as well as men.

Goodell did not prevail in her argument. The justices’ opinion, disguised as protection for women, read: “The peculiar qualities of womanhood, its genteel graces, its quick sensibility, its tender susceptibility, its purity, its delicacy, its emotional impulses, its subordination of hard reason to sympathetic feeling, are surely not qualifications for forensic strife. Nature has tempered woman as little for the juridical conflicts of the court room as for the public conflicts of the battle-field . . . [Our profession] has essentially and habitually to do with all that is selfish and malicious, knavish and criminal, coarse and brutal, repulsive and obscene, in human life. It would be revolting to all female sense of the innocence and sanctity of their sex, shocking to man’s reverence for womanhood and faith in woman, on which hinge all the better affections and humanities of life, that woman should be permitted to mix professionally in all the nastiness of the world which finds its way into courts of justice. . . . ” These sentiments were widespread in America, but the following year the Wisconsin state legislature revised its statutes and admitted Goodell to the bar. The view that women had no place in a courtroom, however, would prevail.

Contrary to some popular opinion, many of these early women lawyers had men who supported them in their efforts. The sympathetic judge who admitted Arabella Mansfield, Myra Bradwell’s husband who encouraged her not to give up, the lawyer who represented Lavinia Goodell in court when she could not make her own appeal—these and other men allied themselves with women in their struggles. These allies were frequently family members who enabled women to study and practice law. Husband and wife teams provided an acceptable environment for women to remain in the background while contributing to the office practice. Progressive male lawyers often became mentors to aspiring female lawyers.

White women had a difficult time obtaining the right to practice law, but their struggles were mild compared to those of black women. Charlotte E. Ray, a graduate of Howard University School of Law in 1872, was the first black woman lawyer in the United States. Ray impressed everyone with her intelligence and legal skill, but the prejudice of the time discouraged clients from using her. Reluctantly, she returned to her teaching career. The number of black female attorneys rose ever so slowly. By 1910, U.S. census data listed only two female black attorneys in the entire country while there were 556 white female attorneys. Minority females had to overcome the double barriers of gender discrimination and racial prejudice.

In spite of some successes, experiences similar to those of Arabella Mansfield, Myra Bradwell, Lavinia Goodell, and Charlotte Ray were rare and progress was slow for women entering the legal profession over the next forty years. Some states, including Texas, allowed women to practice law while others resisted. Not until 1923 did every state admit women to the bar. This was nearly three centuries after Margaret Brent had proved that a woman could, in fact, be at least as effective in public life as the men to whom the prerogative was reserved.

Women were hampered not only by legal precedent but also by social convention, which defined women as belonging to a separate sphere of society from men. This feminine sphere kept women out of the public eye which included, of course, the practice of law. Even when new laws were enacted state by state to admit women to the bar, societal disapproval remained intact. This disapproval erupted into rank discrimination which would become ingrained in the struggle of female lawyers to achieve equality with male members of the bar. As might be expected, the number of women lawyers in the country continued to be quite low—between 1 and 3 percent—until the renewed women’s movement of the 1970s. The civil rights movement helped raise concerns not only for racial equality but also for the rights of women.

The last quarter of the twentieth century saw an extraordinary increase in both licensed women lawyers and their acceptance in the profession. As more women became “friends of the court,” substantive law has become friendlier to women. The number of women students in law school rose from 4 to 20 percent in less than a decade. Women students streamed into institutions that did not know how to make them feel welcome or how to integrate them into the classroom setting. Many law schools had never hired a woman professor. Women, whether student or faculty, still felt like outsiders in the heavily male environment. Gradually, however, new gender-related courses were introduced into the curriculum and women formed their own organizations for bonding and networking.

Yet one aspect of being a woman lawyer is still problematic. The practice of law, in most instances, is not accommodating to women’s lives. Many of the early female lawyers were single and childless. Today women who are the primary caregivers in their families find themselves caught between the demands of family and those of career. Trying to balance these two aspects of their lives is causing many women to leave the profession.

Another problem that lingers for some women is that of sexual discrimination, including subtle bias, unequal treatment, and harassment. Admittedly, it is less overt than in the past, but its very existence indicates that women are not yet viewed as equal participants in all areas of the legal profession. Surveys have shown that women especially feel discrimination in advancement opportunities. The glass ceiling has occasionally been penetrated, but for many women it is still there. Though firms are hiring women with greater frequency, the road to a partnership is not assured. Few women are managing partners in major Texas firms. Female deans are a minority among the country’s law schools. While the judiciary now has scores of women on the bench, they are not always well represented on the highest courts. Considering that none of these possibilities even existed fifty years ago, we recognize the progress women have made in the legal arena.

Although women lawyers still represent a minority of the profession in Texas, they have achieved success in all areas: litigation, corporate law, large firm practice, small firm and solo practice, government, politics, academia, the judiciary, and bar leadership. Their success has been built on the foundation created by those who came before them. The pioneers in the field proved that women lawyers were as intelligent, hardworking, and capable as their male counterparts. Here are their stories.

To order Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas, call the State Bar Sales Desk at 800.204.2222, ext. 411 or follow this link.