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1847
Marija Milutinović became the first female lawyer and attorney in Serbia, doing exclusively pro bono work for charity throughout her whole career[1]
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1869
Arabella Mansfield became the first female lawyer in the United States when she was admitted to the Iowa bar.[2]
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1870
Ada Kepley became the first woman to graduate from law school in the United States; she graduated from Chicago University Law School, predecessor to Union College of Law, later known as Northwestern University School of Law.[3
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1872
Charlotte E. Ray became the first African-American female lawyer in the United States.[4]
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1872
Clara Hapgood Nash became the first woman admitted to the bar in New England.[5]
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1873
Johanna von Evreinov became the first woman to obtain a Doctor of Law (Dr. jur.) degree in Germany on 21 February 1873, after having been admitted as a guest student at Leipzig University.[6]
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1879
Belva Ann Lockwood became the first woman to argue before the United States Supreme Court.
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1888
Cornelia Sorabji became the first woman to practice law in India. After she received a first class degree from Bombay University in 1888, British supporters helped to send her to Oxford University.
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1897
Clara Brett Martin became the first female lawyer in Canada and the British Empire.[9]
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1897
Ethel Benjamin became the first female lawyer in New Zealand and the first to appear as counsel for any case in the British Empire.[10][11]
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1905
Flos Greig became the first female barrister in Australia.
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1911
Clotilde Luisi became the first female lawyer in Uruguay.[12]
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1913
Natividad Almeda-Lopez became the first female lawyer in the Philippines.[16]
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1918
Judge Mary Belle Grossman became one of the first two female lawyers admitted to the American Bar Association.[4]
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1918
Mary Florence Lathrop became one of the first two female lawyers admitted to the American Bar Association.[4]
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1918
Eva Andén became the first female lawyer admitted to the Swedish Bar Association.[17]
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1920
Edith Cowan became Australia's first female magistrate.
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1920
Ella Negruzzi became the first female lawyer in Romania.[18][19]
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1922
Ivy Williams became the first woman to be called to the English bar.[20]
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1922
Helena Normanton became the first female barrister to practice in England.[22]
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1922
Florence E. Allen became the first woman elected to a U.S. state supreme court (specifically, the Ohio Supreme Court).[23]
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1922
Florence King became the first woman to argue a patent case before the U.S. Supreme Court.[24]
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1922
Auvergne Doherty became the first woman from Western Australia to be admitted to the English bar.
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1923
Irene Antoinette Geffen (née Newmark) became the first female lawyer in South Africa when she was admitted to the bar in the Transvaal in 1923.
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1923
Florence King became the first woman to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923 (Crown v. Nye).[24]
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1928
Genevieve Cline won U.S. Senate confirmation on May 25, 1928, as a judge of the United States Customs Court (now known as the Court of International Trade), received her commission on May 26, 1928, and took her oath of office in the Cleveland Federal Building on June 5, 1928,[27] thus becoming the first American woman appointed to the federal bench.
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1937
Anna Chandy of Travancore (later Kerala), British India, became the first woman judge in the Anglo-Saxon world.[30
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1940
Ai Kume became one of the first three women admitted to the bar in Japan.[31]
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1940
Masako Nakata became one of the first three women admitted to the bar in Japan.[31]
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1940
Yoshiko Mibuchi became one of the first three women admitted to the bar in Japan.[31]
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1941
Frances Moran became the first woman to take silk in the British Isles when she was called to the Irish Inner Bar.
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1943
Frances Wright was called to the bar, becoming the first female lawyer in Sierra Leone.[32]
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1956
Elizabeth Evatt became the first woman appointed as a judge to the Family Court of Australia. She would go on to serve as Chief Justice in 1976.
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1965
Lorna E. Lockwood became the first woman chief justice of any U.S. state (specifically, she was chief justice of Arizona).[33]
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1970
Doris Brin Walker became the first female president of the (American) National Lawyers Guild.[34]
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1971 Barring women from practicing law was prohibited in the U.S.[35]
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1976
Pat O'Shane became the first Indigenous Australian barrister in NSW. She would go on to become a magistrate.
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1981
Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.[36]
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1981
Arnette Hubbard became the first female president of the (American) National Bar Association.[37]
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1978
Asma Jahangir Advocate and first female Human Rights Activist who established Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
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1987
Mary Gaudron became the first woman to serve as a Justice of the High Court of Australia.
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1988
Sue Gordon was appointed as magistrate to the Perth Children's Court becoming the first Indigenous Australian magistrate in Western Australia.
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1988
Juanita Kidd Stout was appointed to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, thus becoming the first African-American woman to serve on a state's highest court.[4]
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1993
Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first Jewish female to serve as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.[40
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1995
Roberta Cooper Ramo became the first female president of the American Bar Association.[41]
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2008
Roberta Cooper Ramo became the first female president of the American Law Institute.[41]
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2009
Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic and Latina female to serve as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.[40]
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2013
Bayan Mahmoud Al-Zahran and three of her peers became the first Saudi Arabian women granted a license to practice law.
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2017
Susan Kiefel became the first female Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.
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2019
Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat became the first female Chief Justice of Malaysia.
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2022
Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first African-American woman to serve as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.[40]
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2023
Sue Carr became the first woman to head the judiciary of England and Wales since the inception of the office in the 13th century.[43][44][45]
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2024
Mandisa Maya was appointed as South Africa’s first female Chief Justice.[46]
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2024
Efua Ghartey was elected as the first female president of the Ghana Bar Association (GBA).[49]
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