Ladies of Legend: The First Generation of American Women Attorneys1

Abstract

In 1893, Chicago attorney Ellen Martin sent an invitation to her sisters in law to attend a first ever Congress of Women Lawyers, a convention to be held in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair. Her announcement went out to “All women in the United States and elsewhere who have been admitted to the bar of a court of record or graduated from a law school.” Martin and Fredrika Perry, her law partner, had chronicled the rise of the woman lawyer in an 1887 article titled “Admission of Women to the Bar.”2 Thanks to their survey and the 1890 national census, Martin knew there were more than 200 female attorneys in the United States—what we may think of as the first generation of U.S. women lawyers.3 Speculating that many of them would come to a meeting that coincided with the World's Fair, Martin made the argument that her sisters needed to form a professional association for the purpose of learning from each other and binding themselves more closely together.