Bucking the Bar

By Andrea Sachs

When she applied to Harvard Law School in 1961, Judith Richards Hope was committing a daring act. The modern feminist movement had yet to begin, and female attorneys such as Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg had been unable to find firms to hire them. But Hope and 14 other pioneering women managed to graduate from Harvard in the class of 1964, as Hope describes in her new book, Pinstripes & Pearls (Scribner).

WHEN YOU APPLIED TO LAW SCHOOL, WERE THERE PEOPLE WHO SUGGESTED YOU WOULD NEVER GET MARRIED? Oh, yes. Being smart, if you were a woman, wasn't something you were supposed to show. There was a feeling that if you worked outside the home, there was probably something masculine about you, and you would not be a good candidate for marriage.

SOME OF YOUR MALE CLASSMATES WOULD MOVE AWAY WHEN A WOMAN STUDENT SAT NEXT TO THEM. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT? A lot of the men in the class had never been in school with women before. They had gone to a boys' prep school, then a boys' college, and then Harvard Law School was supposed to be all boys, and suddenly it wasn't. I think they viewed it as some of the members of the Augusta National Golf Club view membership there--that it's their place, and women should stay out.

WHAT WAS LADIES' DAY? One of the professors, a brilliant teacher, would call on the women in his section only on specific days, called Ladies' Days. The women would sit on the podium, facing the rest of the class, and respond to questions. It was an entertainment, it was a way to break the tension, because the men were treated very roughly too. The truth is, it was a huge put-down. But the women didn't think of it that way.

AND OTHER PROFESSORS TREATED THE WOMEN ROUGHLY? I don't think they were trying to humiliate us. Today, of course, you would get sued and fired for doing some of those things. But in our generation, it was what we expected.

WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR CLASSMATES AFTER LAW SCHOOL? Almost all of us got married, almost all of us had children, and almost all of us have had great careers. Our group includes private practitioners, law-school professors, an assistant attorney general of Hawaii, a Federal Court of Appeals judge and a former Congresswoman.

HOW DID YOUR LEGAL CAREER AFFECT YOUR FAMILY LIFE? I took time off with each of my two children. And really I worked only part time until they were 4 and 6. If I have one regret, it's that I didn't take more time off with them than I did.

WHEN YOU GET TO KNOW YOUNG WOMEN LAWYERS, HOW DO THEY REGARD WHAT YOU DID? They just can't believe it was so different in less than half a century. They don't really know exactly how we had the fortitude and the will to do what we did. But the fact is, we didn't understand that it could be a lot better. We didn't understand that these barriers would come tumbling down.

IF YOU HAD IT TO DO OVER, WOULD YOU BECOME A LAWYER? Absolutely. Oh, I love the law. Yes, I absolutely would.