Super Lawyers - Pennsylvania and Delaware 2017

Women entering the law faced discrimination in the ’70s, but many of their mothers and aunts couldn’t even go to law school.

Regina O’Brien Thomas, Ballard Spahr, Boston University School of Law 1973: My mom was an “at-home” legal secretary to an uncle who was a small-town lawyer. She closed her bedroom door and typed “stips,” which many years later I understood to be stipulations. Even when you read stories about the pioneers Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor, my mother was before their time. In 1941, maybe you could find one [female attorney] somewhere, but an ordinary woman in an ordinary town like my mom certainly could not aspire to be a lawyer. My mom couldn’t; I could.

Susan K. Hoffman, Littler Mendelson, University of Pennsylvania Law School 1974: My father was a truck driver, my mother was a secretary, and I thought I wanted to be a physicist or a mathematician. But I ended up majoring in economics and, probably because I grew up reading my father’s Teamster magazines, I became very interested in working on labor relations. I spent my summers working for an actuarial firm, because I babysat the actuary’s kids when I was in high school. I knew I didn’t want to be an actuary, but I liked the business environment and I figured I’d get a job in labor relations management.

But in 1969 and ’ 70, I couldn’t get a job interview because I was a girl.

In 1970, women still made up only 4 percent of the student body in U.S. law school. It was still a man’s world.

Alice Gosfield, Alice G. Gosfield and Associates, NYU School of Law 1973: The only role model I had at that time as a female lawyer was Bella Abzug, who I did not consider to be a model I wanted to follow. I thought, “Well, it’s only three years, I’ll go.”

Martha Hartle Munsch, Reed Smith, Yale Law School 1973: I was the sports editor of my undergraduate student newspaper and I wanted to be a sports journalist. I have no lawyers in my family. I never really aspired to go to law school. But my best friend convinced me to take the law boards, and I did really well. This was before women really had any visibility in sports journalism. I learned that Howard Cosell was a lawyer. I tell people, if ESPN had existed back in the early 1970s, I would never have become a practicing lawyer.

Marilyn Kutler, Schnader Harrison, University of Pennsylvania Law School 1974: I approached a man [who] was a lawyer by training and he had graduated from Penn Law in 1930. We had a very nice business relationship and I said, “Gee, I’m hoping I can get a reference for Penn Law School,” and he said, “Oh, really, why are you going?” I said, “Because I think I would be a good lawyer.” He said, without missing a beat, “But I think you might displace a man.” And I remember thinking, “Really?”