More than any other profession women entered in the nineteenth century, law was the most rigidly engendered. Access to courts, bar associations, and law schools was controlled by men, while the very act of gaining admission to practice law demanded that women reinterpret the male-constructed jurisprudence that excluded them. This history of women lawyersfrom the 1860s to the 1930s - defines the contours of women's integration into the modern legal profession.

Based on rich and diverse archival sources, this book is the landmark study of the history of women lawyers in America.