The Rules of Engagement: How Women Attorneys Broke Law's Glass Ceiling

The Rules of Engagement will be my third book on women lawyers, following my two earlier studies of nineteenth century women attorneys, Belva Lockwood (2007) and Rebels at the Bar (2013). Rules takes up the story of these women and their profession in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The story will be told through the lens of eighty-five oral histories recorded and transcribed between 2005 and 2013 by volunteer lawyer-interviewers with the American Bar Association's Women Trailblazers Project. Rules will be a history and a collective memoir of women who trained in the law. 

Sixty years ago the terms of engagement were clear: only a few women would be admitted each year to American law schools and after graduation their professional opportunities would never equal those of similarly qualified men. Beginning in the 1970s the rules began to change and opportunities for women in law schools, and the legal profession, increased. Today, the rules have changed in significant ways and many of the women who are the subject of this book have broken law's glass ceiling. Rules will be the story of how they did it.