In an otherwise forgettable film set in the World War II era, a haughty firm administrator tells an aspiring secretary, “Almost all of our secretaries come from Vassar.” When I first saw the film, I was a new legal secretary who considered the job little more than a stopgap until my life sorted itself out and I could manage something I considered a real career. I could scarcely envision a world in which it took a degree from an elite private college to do what I did.
Women have made great strides in the legal profession since the 1940s. Today, nearly a third of all U.S. lawyers are women, and females account for nearly half of law school enrollment.
