History of Women Lawyers
from the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations

In 1869, Arabella "Belle" Babb Mansfield was admitted to the Iowa Bar after passing the bar exam with high marks and successfully challenging Iowa's restriction that only males over the age of 21 were eligible for bar admission, making her the first woman to be admitted to a state bar. In 2019 we celebrated 150 years of women lawyers in the United States! 

Since the establishment of the Equity Club at the University of Michigan in 1886, women lawyers and law students have formed associations of their own: sometimes because they were excluded from the formal or informal mentoring networks of men, sometimes for a special purpose, such as getting a woman on the bench, or sometimes just to share common concerns in a supportive setting. Specific women’s bar associations have come and gone. Some of the oldest in continuous existence are the National Association of Women Lawyers (1899), Women’s Bar Association of Illinois (1914), the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia (1917),  Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (1919), Women Lawyers Association of Michigan (1919) and Queen’s Bench of San Francisco (1921). During the “Second Feminist Wave” of the 1970s, an influx of women into the profession brought renewed energy to women’s bar associations, and many new groups were created. It was in response to this interest that the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations came into being at an American Bar Association meeting in 1981.

For more on the history of the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations, click here.