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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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