The National Conference of Women's Bar Associations

The National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations

Since the establishment of the Equity Club at the University of Michigan in 1886, women lawyers and law students have formed associations of their own: sometimes because they were excluded from the mentoring networks of men, sometimes for a special purpose (such as getting a woman on the bench), or sometimes just to share common concerns in a supportive setting. In the 1970s, as women entered the profession in everincreasing numbers, there was great leadership in the women’s bar associations’ pipeline but little recognition of it in the establishment bars. In 1980, when Timmerman Daugherty, the first elected president of the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations (NCWBA), spoke at the Maryland State Bar Association’s midyear meeting, the largely male audience cheered and applauded at the news that, in 1946, their association had been the last to “give in” and admit women.

: NCWBA President Delores Pegram Wilson presents the 1986 Public Service Award to Gill Freeman, who accepted the recognition on behalf of Miami-Dade FAWL.

Board members gather for NCWBA’s 10th anniversary dinner in Atlanta, Georgia.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg congratulates NCWBA board members after their admission to the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1997.

In 1981, the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia compiled a list of women’s bar groups and asked them to send a representative to New Orleans to attend the American Bar Association (ABA) annual meeting. Participants at this initial gathering, many of whom had been instrumental in founding or strengthening the women’s bar groups in their own states, were enthusiastic about starting an organization of women’s bar associations, and the NCWBA was born. Susan Low of Washington, D.C., served informally as the first acting president. By 1983, NCWBA was formally organized and elected its first officers and directors. At the 1991 ABA annual meeting, the House of Delegates recognized the NCWBA as an affiliate organization. Not everyone was comfortable with increasing the influence of women’s bar associations. In a telephone poll reported in the March 1984 ABA Journal, nearly 100 years after the establishment of the Equity Club, only 52 percent of female lawyers and 31 percent of male lawyers answered affirmatively that women’s bar associations would help women lawyers.

In February 1985, during testimony before the ABA’s Task Force on Minorities, Daugherty outlined the purposes of the NCWBA: to protect the interests of women lawyers and to achieve their full participation in the legal profession; to advance opportunities for women attorneys and to improve their access to positions of merit and responsibility; to promote and assist in the organization and growth of local and statewide women’s bar associations; and to serve as a vehicle for the exchange and dissemination of information and ideas among women’s bar associations. Women’s bar groups are now widely viewed as important and effective partners with other state, local, and specialty bar groups. Former NCWBA board members have become judges or presidents of their local and state bar associations or other civic groups. Two have served as ABA president. Despite these successes, the work of the NCWBA and each of our member associations continues. In the words of Mary Ann Coffey, founding board member and long-time executive director, “As long as women are still leaving the profession and are not able to develop their full potential, we need women’s voices to join together to demand change. Women’s bar associations are not disappearing.”

The NCWBA board meets in Toronto in 2011.

Pictured from left to right, NCWBA board members Shiloh Theberge, Leigh-Ann Durant, and Nicolette Zachary at the NCWBA Annual Summit welcome reception in San Francisco in 2016.

Pictured from left to right, Robin Bresky, Amanda Green Alexander, Phyllis Solomon, and Angel Zimmerman at the 2017 NCWBA Annual Summit welcome reception at Fordham University School of Law.

Past presidents gather in San Francisco in 2007 to celebrate the NCWBA. They are, from left: Lynne Albert (2006-07), Nancy Newman (2001-02), Carole Aciman (2005-06), Anne Martin (1998- 99), Ellen Kearns (2004-05), Katherine O’Neil (1993-94), Delores Pegram Wilson (1986-87), Jo Harriet Strickler (1991-92), Pauline Weaver (1989-90), Mary Wolverton (2000-01), and Lisa Hill Fenning (1987-88).