The Oklahoma Bar Journal September 2024

of the individual woman prac titioner to the law is the relation of an individual rather than of a member of a class; that there are no generalizations to be made about the woman lawyer as such. 6 She went on to catalog the prob lems, challenges, achievements and general progress of women in the law and concluded with this thought: “As far as I know there is no woman general counsel for a railroad or an oil company ... When there is – as there will be – my subject will have completely ceased to exist.” 7 She was perhaps a bit ahead of her time but sadly also a bit over-optimistic. In 1961, the year before I started law school, only 316 women graduated from law school out of 11,220 graduat ing students. 8 There were three women sitting on the federal bench, the only three that had ever been appointed to that position. 9 In my law school class in 1962, I was one of 23 women out of 580 students. There were no women law professors, and one of the professors refused to call on women except once per semester when he conducted “ladies’ day” and called only on the women students. When I began practicing law in 1965, I only knew of eight other women who were then in the practice of law in Tulsa. At the Tulsa County Bar picnic that summer, the entertain ment after dinner was a stripper!

Rembaugh, the subject of women in the law does still exist. The Oklahoma Bar Association cele brates that subject in this journal. Note: This introduction was originally published in the 2003 book Leading the Way: A Look at Oklahoma’s Pioneering Women Lawyers. It has been slightly modified with Judge Seymour’s permission for republication in this issue of the Oklahoma Bar Journal .

The face of the legal profession in Oklahoma and across the United States has changed dramatically in the years since I became a lawyer. In 1965, for example, no women graduated from the OU College of Law. Likewise, neither OUC nor TU has any record of a female law graduate that year. In the 1970s, women began attending law schools in much greater num bers. Now, more than 50% of law students across the country are female. 10 In 1996, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg came to speak at the Women in Law Conference in Tulsa, Roberta Cooper Ramo had just become the first woman president of the American Bar Association, Mona Salyer Lambird was the first woman president of the Oklahoma Bar Association, Millie Otey was immedi ate past president of the Tulsa County Bar Association, I was the first woman chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, and Justice Yvonne Kauger was about to become the second woman chief jus tice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. There are still barriers to over come. Those that lie ahead are in some ways more pernicious and, consequently, perhaps more difficult to take on. For example, we now see the persistence of the so-called “mommy track.” So despite the great hopes of Bertha

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephanie K. Seymour was the first female judge appointed to the 10th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court in 1979. She served as chief judge

from 1994 until 2000.

ENDNOTES

1. K. Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America: 1638 to the Present , 2-38 (1986). 2. “2002 Oklahoma Bar Association Membership Survey Report,” 73 OBJ 3402 (Dec. 7, 2002). 3. History of Women’s Suffrage 233 (E. Stanton, S. Anthony, M. Gage and I. Harper, eds. 1981-1922). 4. Okla. Stat. tit. 32, §2. 5. Janice P. Dreiling, “Women and Oklahoma Law: How It Has Changed, Who Changed It, and What is Left,” 40 Oklahoma Law Review . 417, 418 (1987). 6. Bertha Rembaugh, “Women in the Law,” 1 NYU Law Review , 19, 19-20 (1924). 7. Id. at 23. 8. Stephen G. Breyer, Foreword to Judith Richards Hope, Pinstripes & Pearls , at xxiii (2003). 9. Id. at xix. 10. American Bar Association, Legal Education and Bar Admission Statistics, 1963-2003, available at www.abanet.org.

Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff.

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THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL