After meeting Benjamin Harrison while working at a law firm, Alice Sanger became the first woman to join the official White House staff in 1890. As his personal secretary and stenographer, she was famed for her discretion and trustworthiness when it came to the many political secrets she was privy to. Later in life, she would be the woman to originate the official US holiday, Flag Day.
Elizabeth Freeman, formerly known as Mum Bett, was an enslaved woman in the household of a prominent revolutionary during the peak of America’s fight for independence. After having heard prominent speeches on the subject of liberty and freedom being written and read aloud in her household, Elizabeth bravely set out to sue for her own liberation. She became the first African American to argue for and win her freedom in an American court of law. Her case set the precedent for “freedom suits” in Massachusetts, which effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts in 1781.
Delia Opekokew is a Cree lawyer and writer from the Canoe Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. She was the first First Nations woman lawyer to ever be admitted to the bar association in Ontario and in Saskatchewan, as well as the first woman ever, to run for the leadership of the Assembly of First Nations. Delia Opekokew experienced residential schools first hand during her childhood, at both Beauval Indian Residential School and Lebret Indian Residential School. Delia Opekokew is an accomplished women in the field of Indigenous activism and has paved the way for numerous Indigenous women to follow in her footsteps. She has received many awards, including; The Aboriginal Achievement Award, Women’s Law Association of Ontario Presidents award, Law Society of Ontario Medal and Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Lifetime Achievement Award.
Fadwa Hammoud began her career as a clerk for a U.S. District Court Judge, before becoming a prosecuting attorney for Wayne County, Michigan. In 2016, she became Michigan’s Solicitor General, making her the first Arab-American to hold that title. In this role, she served as head of the Flint water crisis investigations. In 2021, Fadwa would argue Brown v. Davenport before the Supreme Court, making her the first Muslim Arab-American woman to do so. She currently serves the state of Michigan as Chief Deputy Attorney General.
Judge Victoria Kolakowski became the first and only openly transgender trial judge in the United States when she was elected to the Alameda County Superior Court in November 2010. Judge Kolakowski is a former President of the International Association of LGBT Judges, and of the Earl Warren American Inn of Court chapter in Alameda County. She was an attorney for twenty-one years in Louisiana and California, serving as a sole practitioner, attorney in a small firm, as general counsel for a publicly-traded company, as a senior government utility regulatory attorney, and as an administrative law judge for two different California agencies. As a judge, she has served in both civil and criminal trial assignments. She recently completed a year as the Supervising Judge of the Collaborative Courts, with subject matter oversight over all of the treatment courts (drug, behavioral health, veterans’, etc.) in Alameda County.
Jane Bolin was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on April 11, 1908. She was the daughter of Gaius C. Bolin, a lawyer and the first black person to graduate from Williams College. At 16, she enrolled at Wellesley College where she was one of only two black freshmen. Bolin graduated in the top 20 of her class in 1928.
Although Bolin was strongly discouraged from applying to Yale Law School due to her race, she was admitted and graduated in 1931 as the first black woman to receive a law degree from Yale. She then went on to become the first black woman to join the New York City Bar Association in 1932.
On July 22, 1939, Mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, appointed Bolin as a judge of the Domestic Relations Court, making Bolin the first black woman to serve as a judge in the United States. Bolin proceeded to be the only black female judge in the country for twenty years.
The legal pioneer for women was Clara Brett Martin. Clara was duly called to the Ontario bar and received her LL.B. in 1899 after the term ‘person’ was amended by the Law Society to included women.
She sadly died at age 49 and did not see the ripple affect she had for the women who followed. Still today women in Canada make up 40% of the law profession.
After leaving her vocation as a teacher, and becoming extremely proficient in shorthand, Ella began writing out cases in courts. Before long, lawyers took notice of her efficiency and attention to detail. In 1885, she was unanimously voted to be the official court reporter for the Rutland County Court by a Vermont Supreme Court Judge. Shortly after, she was appointed to that same position in the neighboring county, Addison. Ella is largely believed to be the first woman to hold such a title in the United States.
While lasting only a few short months in 1993, lawyer Kim Campbell served as the 19th Prime Minster of Canada. She has been the only woman to hold that post to date. Prior to becoming the final Progressive Conservative (PC) prime minister, she was also the first woman to serve as minister of justice in Canadian history and the first woman to become minister of defence in a NATO member state.
Louise Arbour is a former Justice of both the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Ontario Court of Appeal. She then took on the role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and was the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, and for Rwanda. As Chief Prosecutor, she made history in at least two respects: 1) by being the first to prosecute sexual assault under the Articles of Crimes Against Humanity; and 2) by criminally indicting a sitting head of state, the Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic.
Social Responsibility, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives, and Sustainable Operations.
