Women in law have come a long way since Foltz’s speech, when she was only one of about 200 women lawyers across the country, compared with 90,000 men, according to research by the late Stanford Law professor Barbara Babcock, who wrote a biography on Foltz. In recent years, women have made up the majority of law school students in the United States.

Foltz went on to blaze many trails until her 1934 death, becoming the first woman in California to serve as deputy district attorney, to prosecute a murder case, to hold statewide office on a school board and to become a notary public, according to the California Bar Journal.

But according to Babcock, her biographer, “the institution of public defense is her finest legacy.”