Oklahoma Bar Journal
Women in Law
With introductions by Melissa DeLacerda and Retired Judge Stephanie K. Seymour
Reflections on Leading the Way
By Melissa DeLacerda
In 2003, we published the book Leading the Way: A Look at Oklahoma’s Pioneering Women Lawyers. At the time that book was published, only two women had served as OBA presidents (the first, not until 1996), and two women had been members of the Oklahoma Supreme Court throughout the OBA’s history.
Now, a little more than 20 years later, we have had six additional OBA presidents who are women. For the first time, the number of female law school students is equal to, or more than, the number of male students enrolled, and the number of women lawyers who are associates in large firms is equal to the number of male associates. The exponential growth of women in the legal field in the past century is a remarkable accomplishment.
The notable women attorneys featured in this issue broke barriers, gained the respect of their male counterparts and clients and highlighted the importance of diverse perspectives in the legal field. It is important that we continue the momentum, expanding the roles women hold in the legal field,
allowing today’s women lawyers to continue carrying the torch that the women before us held.
We dedicate this month’s publication to Oklahoma’s pioneering women lawyers. This issue of the Oklahoma Bar Journal serves to remind us, to inspire us and to honor those notable women who tread bravely into a world where a path for them – and others – didn’t yet exist.
Melissa DeLacerda is an OBA past president (2003) and the current chair of the Oklahoma Bar Journal Board of Editors.
Introduction
By Retired Judge Stephanie K. Seymour
In 1898, Laura Lykins was the only woman lawyer in Indian Territory.[1] In 1930, Grace Elmore Gibson was a lawyer and a part-time judge before she had the right to serve on a jury. By 2002, women made up approximately a quarter of the active Oklahoma bar.[2]
In the first century of women practicing law in Oklahoma, there were many advances, and we reached many milestones. It is important for us to look back and remember what these pioneering women accomplished so that we may learn from their vision and perseverance as well as appreciate their achievements. My young law clerks were often surprised to hear about what it was like in "the old days" – by which they meant, of course, the 1970s – and to contemplate a professional world in a reality so recent but so startlingly different from what they saw in their law school and law firm experiences at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important that new generations discover the past and remember that they are only in the middle, not at the end, of the journey begun by a handful of amazing women in the late 19th century. They must learn to emulate the women they will read about in this journal and to continue their work, for there are many battles yet to fight. This is not a new sentiment. In 1894, Susan B. Anthony wrote:
We shall someday be heeded, and when we shall have our amendment, everybody will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedoms, all the enjoyments which women now possess always were hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.[3]
This journal tells a wonderful set of stories. They are the stories of Oklahoma women who fought for every single inch of ground we stand on today. These are women of character who made great strides in difficult times.
For example, in Oklahoma Territory in 1890, a law was enacted that stated: "The husband is the head of the family. He may choose any reasonable place or mode of living and the wife must conform thereto." Amazingly, this law is still on the books.[4] Although a 1986 attorney general advisory opinion found the statute unconstitutional, and although it has come before the Oklahoma Supreme Court more than once, the law remains.[5] When the Oklahoma Constitution passed, it was considered a very progressive one, but even so, it left many battles for the women of the state to fight. It was not until 1918 that State Question 97 passed by 25,000 votes, allowing women to vote. It was not until 1942 that a woman could hold state office. It was not until 1951 that Oklahoma afforded women the right to serve on juries. Only when federal law required it in 1974 did Oklahoma allow a wife to sue for loss of consortium.
In 1924, Bertha Rembaugh wrote an essay on the topic of "Women in the Law" for the first issue of the New York University Law Review. She wrote:
[I]s there a subject? Is there anything to say about women in the law, or women in relation to the practice of law, any more or different than there is to say of men in the law? One's first and immediate reaction is, of course, that there is not; that the relation of the individual woman practitioner to the law is the relation of an individual rather than of a member of a class; that there are no generalizations to be made about the woman lawyer as such.[6]
She went on to catalog the problems, challenges, achievements and general progress of women in the law and concluded with this thought: "As far as I know there is no woman general counsel for a railroad or an oil company ... When there is – as there will be – my subject will have completely ceased to exist."[7] She was perhaps a bit ahead of her time but sadly also a bit over-optimistic.
In 1961, the year before I started law school, only 316 women graduated from law school out of 11,220 graduating students.[8] There were three women sitting on the federal bench, the only three that had ever been appointed to that position.[9] In my law school class in 1962, I was one of 23 women out of 580 students. There were no women law professors, and one of the professors refused to call on women except once per semester when he conducted "ladies’ day" and called only on the women students. When I began practicing law in 1965, I only knew of eight other women who were then in the practice of law in Tulsa. At the Tulsa County Bar picnic that summer, the entertainment after dinner was a stripper!
The face of the legal profession in Oklahoma and across the United States has changed dramatically in the years since I became a lawyer. In 1965, for example, no women graduated from the OU College of Law. Likewise, neither OUC nor TU has any record of a female law graduate that year. In the 1970s, women began attending law schools in much greater numbers. Now, more than 50% of law students across the country are female.[10] In 1996, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg came to speak at the Women in Law Conference in Tulsa, Roberta Cooper Ramo had just become the first woman president of the American Bar Association, Mona Salyer Lambird was the first woman president of the Oklahoma Bar Association, Millie Otey was immediate past president of the Tulsa County Bar Association, I was the first woman chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, and Justice Yvonne Kauger was about to become the second woman chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
There are still barriers to overcome. Those that lie ahead are in some ways more pernicious and, consequently, perhaps more difficult to take on. For example, we now see the persistence of the so-called "mommy track." So despite the great hopes of Bertha Rembaugh, the subject of women in the law does still exist. The Oklahoma Bar Association celebrates that subject in this journal.
Note: This introduction was originally published in the 2003 book Leading the Way: A Look at Oklahoma’s Pioneering Women Lawyers. It has been slightly modified with Judge Seymour’s permission for republication in this issue of the Oklahoma Bar Journal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephanie K. Seymour was the first female judge appointed to the 10th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court in 1979. She served as chief judge from 1994 until 2000.
ENDNOTES
[1] K. Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America: 1638 to the Present, 2-38 (1986).
[2] “2002 Oklahoma Bar Association Membership Survey Report,” 73 OBJ 3402 (Dec. 7, 2002).
[3] History of Women's Suffrage 233 (E. Stanton, S. Anthony, M. Gage and I. Harper, eds. 1981-1922).
[4] Okla. Stat. tit. 32, §2.
[5] Janice P. Dreiling, "Women and Oklahoma Law: How It Has Changed, Who Changed It, and What is Left," 40 Oklahoma Law Review. 417, 418 (1987).
[6] Bertha Rembaugh, "Women in the Law," 1 NYU Law Review, 19, 19-20 (1924).
[7] Id. at 23.
[8] Stephen G. Breyer, Foreword to Judith Richards Hope, Pinstripes & Pearls, at xxiii (2003).
[9] Id. at xix.
[10] American Bar Association, Legal Education and Bar Admission Statistics, 1963-2003, available at www.abanet.org.
Mirabeau Cole Looney
Mirabeau Lamar Cole Looney was born Jan. 16, 1871, in Talladega County, Alabama, to William Isaac Cole – a Gatesville, Texas, lawyer – and Martha (Mattie) Ann Nixon.[1] She was named after Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second president of the sovereign Republic of Texas.[2] It is believed the Cole family moved to Robertson County, Texas, around 1880 because the census from that year shows a Lamar Cole living on a farm with her mother; her brothers; her mother's brother, William A. Nixon; and her grandmother, Talitha Walston Nixon.[3]
Ms. Looney's interest in the law surfaced early in her life, and she could often be found reading her father's tan calf law books or fictional accounts of trials. Paralleling her interest in the law was her interest in civil government and history – interests that would serve her well in later years.[4]
In 1891, she married "Doc" Tourney Looney in Texas. Shortly thereafter, the young couple crossed over the Oklahoma line into the future Greer/Harmon County in the southwestern part of Oklahoma Territory and settled in what would later become the Looney community, named after the family.[5] The Looneys filed for a 160-acre homestead in December 1897 in Greer County, where they would begin their family[6] and where Doc Looney would become one of the earliest postmasters in the new area.[7]
Jessie Randolph Moore
Jessie Elizabeth Randolph Moore was born on a plantation in the Chickasaw Nation, Panola County (now Bryan County), on Jan. 30, 1871, to William Colville Randolph and Sarah Ann Tyson Randolph. In 1874, her parents – along with 10 other families – moved to the White Bead Hill region north of the Washita River in what was then Pontotoc County. They established the Randolph settlement north of what is now Maysville. Ms. Moore first attended school in a log schoolhouse built on the Randolph ranch, but the family later moved to Gainesville, Texas, where she attended school at St. Xavier Academy in Denison, Texas, and later Kidd Seminary at Sherman, Texas. Kidd Seminary was known as the "alma mater for the daughters of many prominent families from the Indian Territory."[1]
Florence Etheridge Cobb
Florence Etheridge Cobb was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Sept. 20, 1878, to Samuel W. and Emma A. (Nichols) Etheridge. Her childhood was spent near Boston and Everett, Massachusetts, and she graduated from Everett High School on June 23, 1897. Although she was raised in New England, she did not appear to have a stilted manner or live by the customs of mid-Victorian Boston.
Because of her belief that women had the ability to succeed in activities outside the home, she pursued a legal education. She attended the Washington College of Law, where she received her law degree on May 26, 1911. On Oct. 3, 1911, she was admitted to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia on a motion by Ellen Spencer Mussey.[i] Ms. Cobb continued her legal education, and on May 27, 1912, she received an LL.M. from the Washington College of Law. She was admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 29, 1915.
While living in Washington, D.C., she was employed at the Census Bureau, the Department of Commerce, the Division of Education and, finally, the Office of Indian Affairs. During her years in government service, she was elected treasurer of the Federal Employees Union in 1916, and from 1917 to 1921, she served as the fourth vice president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. Ms. Cobb was one of the few women in federal government service during these years and did her part in the "war of independence for women," according to an article in the Wewoka Times-Democrat.[2] She was a "revolutionist when it came to the question of woman's place, and proper amount of activity in the world outside of the home."[3]
Grace Elmore Gibson
Born Aug. 8, 1886, in Kansas, Grace Elmore Gibson's life was dedicated to being involved in civic and community affairs and setting precedents for women in the legal profession.
Once she graduated from the University of Kansas and married Judge Nathan A. Gibson, she took up the study of law so she "could be a good listener when her husband talked."[1] Ms. Gibson was motivated to action following a conversation with her husband about a case he was handling. When she asked about the case, Judge Gibson commented, "I forgot for a moment that you don't understand law." It was shortly after that conversation that she enrolled in classes and began studying the law.[2] She soon realized she was interested in pursuing a legal career, not just to be a good listener but to practice law as well.
After completing her legal studies and being admitted to the bar in 1929, Ms. Gibson began practicing law in Tulsa's Court Arcade Building. Once she discovered she had a particular interest in cases dealing with the "human equation,"[3] Ms. Gibson developed quite a clientele in the area of domestic difficulties. When discussing the problems women encountered in those times, Ms. Gibson noted that being a wife was a difficult job and involved “expecting things of a man, believing he can do them, keeping an even keel in that most delicate of human relationships, and spending wisely.”[4] She said she found herself being a woman first and then a lawyer – not because he wanted it that way, but because her "colleagues were so acutely conscious that a woman was in the courtroom lawyering.”[5]
Ethel Kehrer Childers
Ethel Kehrer Childers was born Oct. 19, 1887, in Coal Hollow near Chanute, Kansas, to Mr. and Ms. Charles H. Kehrer. She and her six siblings were reared on an 80-acre farm 10 miles southeast of Chanute. She attended a country school near home, and at age 12, she took the examination for admittance into high school and passed with flying colors. After graduating from high school at 15, she obtained a teaching position at Coal Hollow. One day, after several encounters with students – many of whom were larger than she was – she took a rubber hose to 24 students who had disregarded her instructions. Three of them were children of members of the Board of Education. She feared for her job, but the board members respected her "straightforwardness of decision and resoluteness of character” and told her she had the job as long as she wanted it.[1]
Not wanting to return to Coal Hollow, she enrolled in Chanute Business College. After a year, she took a position in Coffeyville, Kansas, for $8 a week. In 1904, the law office of Veasy & Rowland in Bartlesville, Indian Territory, contacted Chanute Business College looking for a legal stenographer. After interviewing for the position, James A. Veasy and L.A. Rowland, just out of law school, asked her if she would stay until they found someone fitted for the job since she had no legal experience. This was another challenge she met by studying the law and learning what she needed to know to keep the job.
Grace Arnold
Grace Arnold was born in 1888 in Creek County. After passing the bar examination, Ms. Arnold was admitted to the bar in 1915 and began traveling the state of Oklahoma looking for a place to begin her law practice. According to Earl Newsom in Drumright! The Glory Days of a Boom Town, "Fascinated by the oil fields, she came back to Creek County and Drumright on one of the first passenger trains in 1915."[1] She opened her office on the second floor of the J.W. Fulkerson Building, where she practiced until her retirement.
It soon became evident that Ms. Arnold, Drumright's only female attorney, was to be one of Oklahoma's most colorful women leaders. According to Mr. Newsom, "She carried a gun and kept it under her pillow at night.”[2] Disregarding that “proper women” did not smoke in those days, Ms. Arnold did. When preparing for a case, she would lean her forehead on her hands, and the smoke from her cigarettes rose into her snow-white hair, eventually turning it yellow in front.[3] She always wore trousers and could be seen sitting in the movies with her legs draped over the seat in front of her. Although she normally used proper language, if people in the oil field wanted to communicate with her on a “less sophisticated level,” it was said that Ms. Arnold could hold her own.[4]
Kathryn Nedry Van Leuven
Kathryn Nedry Van Leuven was born Feb. 5, 1888, to John B. and Kathryn Rhyne Nedry in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where she received her primary and secondary education.[1] She moved to Nowata in 1909, where she met her husband, Bert Van Leuven, neighboring Ottawa County's first county judge.[2] A product of six generations of lawyers on both sides of her family, it was only natural that she would be interested in the law.[3] Although she never received a law degree, Ms. Van Leuven was tutored by her husband and father for six years and studied for 18 months at the University of Chicago[4] prior to her admission to the bar in 1913 at the age of 25.[5]
Soon after she began practicing in 1914, Ms. Van Leuven became Nowata County's first female prosecuting attorney when she was named assistant attorney from 1913 to 1915.[6] In 1920, she became the first female assistant attorney general in the U.S. after being appointed to the office by Oklahoma Attorney General S. Price Freeling. Attorney General Freeling, a well-known women's suffrage opponent, had hoped to appease his female critics with the appointment of Ms. Van Leuven,[7] who held the position until 1926.[8]
Kathryn Sturdevant
Kathryn Clyde "Kittie C." Sturdevant was born Sept. 10, 1890, in Cyclone, Texas,[1] to Charles Wesley and Mary Alice Toole Sturdevant.[2] From the age of 4, she was encouraged by her father, a lawyer, to become a lawyer. He knew the time would "come when women would be more active in business affairs," so they “should all be trained for professional work."[3] After graduating from Shawnee High School in 1908, she went to New York City to become a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[4] Upon returning to Shawnee, she went to work as a stenographer with the law firm of Biggers and Lydick.[5] Mr. Lydick acknowledged her "legal mind" and encouraged her to study law the day she timidly suggested that perhaps he had omitted the jurisdictional statement essential to the petition for an important damage suit.[6] Several Pottawatomie County attorneys also took an interest in her study of the law. Ms. Sturdevant said, "I had the advantage of having several attorneys who were university graduates just to tutor me all the way through until 1912 when I took the (bar) examination."[7] She would later say, "My law school was in the university of hard knocks."[8] In her study of the law under Mr. Lydick, she gained valuable experience in Indian land matters, railroad damage suits and the general practice of law.[9] In addition to her work and study with Mr. Lydick, she also took a correspondence course at the Blackstone Institute in Chicago.[10]
Fred Andrews
Fred Andrews, christened Freddie, was born Jan. 14, 1895, in Cecil, Arkansas. When asked if she had been named Freddie because her father wanted a son, she said she "doubted it, for he had plenty of boys, seven girls and six boys."[1] She grew up in Cecil on the family farm and attended Fort Smith Business College.
Ms. Andrews started her career as a legal stenographer in Wetumka. Working in a law firm gave her the opportunity to study law as she worked. She augmented her legal studies with night classes and correspondence courses in law, and after taking the bar examination, she was admitted to the bar on Dec. 13, 1934. She moved to Ada around 1930 and practiced "law in a partnership until 1939, when she opened her own office."[2] She was the first woman attorney in Ada and practiced there for 21 years.
Since there were so few women attorneys when she began her practice, she decided that if she were going to get clients, she would have to use the shortened version of her name.[3] Ms. Andrews tells the story of her first client, a farmer, who purchased a tractor only to find it unsatisfactory. Upon his arrival at the office of “Fred Andrews, Attorney at Law,” the farmer kept insisting he wanted to see a lawyer. When Ms. Andrews finally convinced him she was Fred Andrews, he said, "Well, I better find another, a man. A woman wouldn’t know anything about farm machinery.” She retorted, “No, but I know about contracts."[4] The farmer became a regular client.
Norma Frazier Wheaton
Norma Frazier Wheaton was born Aug. 13, 1899, in New York City and was orphaned at the age of 11. The oldest of three children, Ms. Wheaton became a parent to her younger siblings. After graduating from Northwestern University, she took a secretarial position in the office of Hudson and Hudson, a Tulsa law firm, so her siblings could also receive a college education.[1]
While working for Robert D. Hudson and his father, Wash Hudson, Ms. Wheaton realized she wanted her legal career to involve more than just typing briefs for the Hudsons. She wanted to be a lawyer. Determined, she entered the TU College of Law and graduated with highest honors in 1927.[2] She was admitted to the Oklahoma bar later that year. After graduating, Ms. Wheaton continued her career with Hudson and Hudson but traded her secretarial duties for those of an attorney. In 1947, she was named a partner in the firm, which became Hudson, Hudson, Wheaton and Brett.[3]
Ms. Wheaton practiced in the area of real property, insurance and domestic law until her retirement in 1972.[4] She was an attorney of record on six reported decisions from 1928 to 1965, one of which, In re House Bill No. 145, secured for women the right to serve on juries.[5] Up against Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson and First Assistant Attorney General Fred Hansen, Ms. Wheaton – along with Mildred Brooks Fitch, Jewell Russell Mann and Dorothy Young – convinced the Oklahoma Supreme Court to declare that in the constitutional provision stating that 12 men should serve on grand juries, the use of the term "men" was generic and should also include women. Ten long years after she began pushing the Legislature to secure the rights for women to serve on juries, her efforts were finally realized with the decision in In re House Bill No. 145 and the primary election on July 1, 1952.[6]
Dorothy Young
Dorothy Young was born in Linn Creek, Missouri, on Nov. 8, 1901. She graduated from the Tulsa College of Law and was admitted to the bar in 1928, which paved the way for a diverse legal career. Ms. Young began her legal career as a clerk and assistant to the deputy state umpire in the Tulsa office of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Her next position was with the Land and Leasing Department of the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Co. in Bartlesville. Following that, she joined the Barnsdall Oil Co. in Tulsa. Her diverse career culminated in the 1950 opening of her own office in Tulsa.
In 1951, an impressive group of women attorneys tested the constitutionality of House Bill No. 145 in the 23rd Legislature in the Supreme Court. The bill eliminated the disqualifications of women to serve on juries. The group included Ms. Young, Mildred Brooks Fitch, Jewell Russell Mann and Norma Wheaton. They faced Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson and First Assistant Attorney General Fred Hansen. The women prevailed, with the court ruling the act was constitutional and that women could serve on juries. In 1952, Ms. Young was again the attorney of record on a reported decision dealing with a descent, distribution and rights of heirs question before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Jewell Russell Mann
Jewell Russell Mann was born June 13, 1903, in Madison, Arkansas,[1] and was a champion fighter for women's rights from her high school years in Okmulgee until her death in 1987. In high school, she was a member of a women's club, the forerunner of the Business and Professional Women's Club.[2] Graduating from high school at age 15, the remainder of her education was accomplished through evening courses. In 1928, after three years of attending classes six nights a week, she obtained her law degree from the Tulsa College of Law, the predecessor of the TU College of Law.[3] Ms. Mann was admitted to the bar in 1928.
After graduating from law school, she went to work as a secretary for Midstates Oil Corp., and when asked why she accepted a position as a secretary instead of as an attorney, she replied, "You had to accept it. Now I tell young women applying for jobs not to mention they can type."[4] In her first days at Midstates, she was given such legal tasks as examining oil lease titles but soon found herself on the path to a probate, real estate and corporate law practice.[5]
In 1942, Ms. Mann – along with Minnie L. Dettweiler, Nell W. Bracken, Maude Rounsaville and Lou Etta Bellamy Dick – were attorneys of record on a reported decision reversing an earlier district court decision denying a widow's allowance during the administration of her deceased husband's estate.[6] In 1951, In re House Bill No. 145, 23rd Legislature, Ms. Mann and another group of pioneer women attorneys – Mildred Brooks Fitch, Norma Wheaton and Dorothy Young – took on the state of Oklahoma to eliminate the disqualifications of women to serve on juries. The constitutionality of the House bill was upheld, saying the "constitutional provision that says that grand juries should be composed of 12 men used 'men' in its generic sense, and included women or females as well."[7]
Bernice Beckham
Bernice Dona Berry Beckham was born in Enid in 1910. She attended schools in Enid, skipping several grades in high school and combining her last year of college at Phillips University with her first year of law school at the OU College of Law. In addition to her academic achievements, Ms. Beckham was a member of the debate and swim teams throughout high school and college. She was also a competitive bridge player in college, a hobby that continued while she was in law school. As one of only two female students in her class at the OU College of Law, she was made a member of the Order of the Coif thanks to her academic achievements.[1] She graduated from law school in 1931 and was admitted to the bar on July 7, 1931.
Like several other female lawyers at the time, Ms. Beckham was active in politics, supporting the Democratic Party in Enid and Oklahoma City. According to her daughter, Joan Whitmore, Ms. Beckham was unable to find a job in the male-dominated legal profession despite her academic credentials and her community and political involvement. Determined to practice law, she opened her own office in Enid's Broadway Tower in 1931, where she practiced until moving to Oklahoma City in 1940.[2] It is said that she took every case that walked through her door. Ms. Beckham and Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson were attorneys of record for the respondents in a reported decision against the State Industrial Commission in an accidental personal injury.[3]
Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher
In 1946, no institution of higher education in the state of Oklahoma accepted Black students as enrollees. At the same time, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher was a recent graduate of Langston University and eager to enter law school.
On Jan. 16, 1946, Ms. Sipuel attempted to enroll in the law school at OU. She was refused admission by the president of the university, who referred her to Title 70, Sections 452-464 of the Oklahoma Statutes, which prohibited Black students from attending schools in Oklahoma.
Two days after Ms. Sipuel was denied admission to the OU School of Law, attorney Thurgood Marshall flew to Oklahoma City and joined with attorney Amos T. Hall of Tulsa to file a petition for a writ mandamus in the District Court of Cleveland County.
District Judge Ben T. Williams, on July 9, 1946, ruled to deny the writ of mandamus on the basis that the laws of Oklahoma prohibited the university from admitting Black students. He further based his decision on the fact that Oklahoma maintained an out-of-state tuition plan for Black citizens who wanted to secure graduate training that was not available to them in the state.
Mona Salyer Lambird
Mona Salyer Lambird was born July 19, 1938, and was raised in Oklahoma City. She obtained a bachelor's degree in 1960 from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and an LL.B. in 1963 from the University of Maryland Law School, where she was one of three women in a class of 100.
She began her legal career in the civil division of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., during the time Robert Kennedy was the attorney general. After a move to Oklahoma City in 1969, Ms. Lambird associated part time with a bond attorney. In 1971, she joined the Oklahoma City law firm of Andrews Davis Legg Bixler Milsten & Price, becoming a shareholder in 1977. Her practice was primarily in employment law on behalf of management.
Ms. Lambird was extremely active in Oklahoma Bar Association activities. She served as chairperson of the Women in Law Conference in 1992 and 1994, served on the Professional Responsibility Tribunal from 1984 to 1990, served as co-chairperson of the Leadership Development Conference in 1992 and 1993, served as a member of the Budget Committee from 1989 to 1994 and the Clients' Security Fund Committee from 1989 to 1994. She was the second woman elected to the Board of Governors for a three-year term, serving as a member from 1992 to 1994 before being elected to serve as 1995 president-elect. On Jan. 19, 1996, she took the oath of office to become the first woman to lead the Oklahoma Bar Association. Following her year as OBA president, she continued to be active and served on the OBA Long Range Planning Committee in 1999 as one of the authors helping to develop a new strategic plan.
Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal – OBJ 95 No. 7 (September 2024)
Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff.