Few women who have been admitted to the bar in the last 10 years have any idea about the great difficulties facing females, or persons of color, who entered the profession years ago.

Law firms at the time I entered the bar in January 1950 refused to hire women or anyone of color. A few women were admitted to law firms as associates during the Second World War, because the men who were lawyers were in the armed forces. When the war ended, the law firms refused to hire females at the bar. Despite my outstanding law school record, no law firm would hire me in California. The situation had not changed three years later when Sandra Day O’Connor ’52 graduated from Stanford. No law firm would hire her either in California or Arizona. She decided to enter politics in Arizona. The rest is history.

When Seth Hufstedler and his late law partner, Charles Beardsley, decided to change the scene for lawyers of color, they were the first law firm in downtown Los Angeles to hire a black lawyer, Sam Williams. Williams rapidly rose to become president of the Los Angeles Bar Association, president of the State Bar of California, and he probably would have become president of the American Bar Association if he hadn’t been stricken with serious illness and died. It is now almost unimaginable to realize how much sex and race prejudice was pervasive in the legal profession at that time. I believe in education, but it often times takes much longer than I would ever have hoped, although my years at work in education should have taught me better a long time ago. Fortunately, then, as now, it is an enormous help to have had an outstanding legal education.

As should be evident, however, females were rarely elevated to the bench in state or federal courts. I was very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to serve as a judge in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, because I had occasion to work as presiding jurist in all the pretrial cases, in writs and receivers, in law and motion, and in the appellate department of the superior court. While I was in law and motion, I created the practice of handwriting a proposed tentative decision in every case, every day. Those tentative decisions have become a common practice in both federal and state trial courts at this time.

When I became a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, I was the only female who had ever been appointed to that court. Then chief judge, Richard Chambers, was totally unnerved. As any newly appointed jurist does, I waited upon him first, when I went to the court. When he was not in his chambers, he returned the visit to my chambers. He was so nervous, I had to restrain myself from going around the chair to pat him on the shoulder and say, “I am not going to do the court over in chintz.” We later became good friends, and I successfully persuaded him to create the first three-person young lawyer assistance for the court. I also created a point count system to weigh the difficulties of the various cases on appeal to distribute the work of the court quite evenly among the various panels. The system is still in use today.

Although entry at the bar and service on the bench were initially extremely difficult, I can assure the readers that women can and do have the opportunities to serve in those positions, often with great distinction.

Seth most certainly didn’t face these obstacles, but I did. However, even as the top graduate of his class, he was paid a mere pittance when he began practicing. Very fortunately, he quickly became known in the legal profession as an outstanding young lawyer and a leader of the bar. His efforts to overcome the obstacles to lawyers of color have paid many dividends for him, for the law firm, and for the young lawyers. As you probably know, he has been president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the State Bar of California, and other outstanding legal organizations.

Perhaps I should mention that married women as young lawyers also faced difficulties with respect to childbearing and rearing that their male counterparts did not encounter. For a period after my son was born, I moved my law office back to my home to be there when there was a burst of silence when the babysitter was there that required my immediate attention. Many young lawyers would be surprised to know that my neighbors when my son was a small child were extraordinarily inconsiderate, because not one of them worked outside the home at that time. They would even send their youngsters with colds to play with my son who suffered severe allergies and would end up in the hospital when he caught colds from other youngsters. Nevertheless, I don’t suggest that young women lawyers “go with the flow.” It is better for them to know that they had better learn how to swim upstream without losing their tempers.