Women Lawyers of Sacramento (WLS) was founded in 1962 by a small group of trailblazing women lawyers. At the time, there were very few women lawyers in Sacramento and the Sacramento County Bar Association did not represent their interests.

The Docket (the predecessor to Sacramento Lawyer) proclaimed in a December 1962 headline, “LADIES ORGANIZE.” The article continued, “The fairer sex has organized.”

WLS held its first regular meeting on December 19, 1962 with 41 charter members. According to the Docket, WLS’ major purpose was to “enable our lady lawyers to participate more effectively with other professional civic organizations and to encourage women in the study and practice of law.” Frances Newell Carr was the first president, with Margaret Flynn as secretary and Julie Egan as treasurer. One of our early presidents, Virginia Mueller, will celebrate her sixtieth year of law practice this year.

Early on, WLS seized the opportunity to become accredited with the State Bar as a bar association. This was clearly quite unusual since correspondence to the WLS president always began, “Dear Sir.”

Although WLS hit the ground running, many of its activities fell to the “ladies” as opposed to the “lawyers.” One of the early tasks was to organize the June 1965 SCBA lunch as a “service to the organization.”

When WLS events made the mainstream newspapers, they were reported on the society or women’s pages instead of the business page. A Sacramento Bee caption in 1970 referred to our members as “Mmes. Donald McCallum, Charles Root and Paul Mueller.” A 1978 Wall Street Journal article on the gains by women in the profession - then up to nine percent of the national bar ran -- under the heading “Ladies of the Bar.” None of this deterred WLS members from serious efforts. In the mid-1960s WLS advocated for various causes including increased help for the new Domestic Relations Department of the Superior Court, for legal services for the poor and increased representation of women on the bench.

In the early 1960s, there was no woman on any court in the Sacramento area. WLS set out to change that. Virginia Mueller and Frances Carr set up a successful lobbying campaign despite the fact that SCBA would not allow women on its extremely influential judiciary committee. WLS’ efforts resulted in Margaret Flynn’s appointment to the Municipal Court in 1965. Judge Flynn’s retirement in 1972 for health reasons again left us with no women on the bench. WLS responded by promoting the appointment of Frances Newell Carr to the Superior Court. She was appointed in 1975 and elevated to the Third District Court of Appeal in 1980. WLS remained dear to Justice Carr until her untimely death in 1992.

Carol Miller was appointed to the Municipal Court bench in 1976. In 1980, the year Justice Carr was elevated, Cecily Bond was appointed to the Superior Court and Carol Miller was elevated from the municipal to the superior court. Between 1981 and 1987, three other women Kathryn Canlis, Alice Lytle and Gail Ohanesian were appointed to the municipal and superior courts.

Another early goal of WLS was to provide scholarships for women law students. In 1966, Barbara McCallum received the first WLS scholarship. McCallum went on to serve as a WLS president, and still practices in Sacramento. WLS established the Margaret Flynn scholarship in 1983. Past president, Jennifer Kaufmann was the first recipient. These were followed by the Frances Newell Carr scholarship in 1992 and the Virginia Mueller scholarship several years ago.

One of the controversies of the early 1970s was the televised “great pantsuit debate” between McCallum and Superior Court Presiding Judge Babich about whether women should, or could, wear pants to court. Judge Babich had ordered that women lawyers could not wear pants (not even smart pantsuits) to court. The Superior Court ultimately rescinded this discriminatory dress code. (In Judge Babich’s defense, he reportedly also threw a male attorney out of court for wearing a lime green pantsuit.)

Another major debate ensued when Jerilyn Paik wrote in the Docket about increased help for the new Domestic Relations Department of the balancing her practice and her family, and accompanied her Superior Court, for legal services for the poor and increased representation of women on the bench. Past President Joan Jernegan recalls a late-1980s incident in which a woman associate needed a medical/maternity leave following a difficult pregnancy. A partner’s take on the situation Frances Carr set up a successful lobbying campaign despite the fact was to proclaim emphatically “Mothers can’t be litigators!”

Many young women attorneys were forced to choose between motherhood and their law practice because of similar implicit or explicit messages. Developing personnel laws and policies that accommodate family life has been particularly important to women in the law, and WLS has long advocated for such policies.

All of us over forty have stories ranging from being questioned about birth control during job interviews, being refused a job for not shaving one’s legs, being referred to in court as “ladies” while the men were addressed as “counsel,” being asked to bring coffee, etc. The frequency of these shocking stories has gradually decreased. The rate of women’s advancement into management positions in law firms and legal departments has improved slowly. Over the last three years, WLS has undertaken a No Glass Ceiling project spearheaded by past president, Grace Bergen, in order to promote the retention and advancement of women lawyers in all aspects of Sacramento law practice.

The Sacramento County Superior Court currently has 13 women judges out of 52 statutory positions. Women hold 25% of the statutory judgeships and fill just under twenty percent of the total departments (some of which are filled by retired judges, referees and commissioners). In the Eastern District, one magistrate judge and one bankruptcy judge are women, but we still have no women district judges. Women comprise about 20% of the Ninth Circuit (including the chief judge). Women have come closest to achieving parity at the Supreme Court, where three of the seven justices are women. Looking at the private sector the percentage of women in leadership and management roles is still far below the percentage of men in the upper ranks. Clearly, the WLS “history” is not over.

Lori T. Okun, a 1988 graduate of the University of California, Davis School of Law, is a Senior Staff Counsel at the State Water Resources Control Board. She thanks Joan Stone, WLS President 1996, for contributing to this article.

July / August 2006