Discoveries About Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin’s First Woman Lawyer

I enthusiastically recommend a new website and blog about the life and times of Lavinia Goodell—Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer and the first woman to be admitted to practice at the Wisconsin Supreme Court (over the Chief Justice’s heated objections). Not only a pioneer in the legal profession, she was active in many other causes, including jail reform, temperance, and women’s suffrage before her death in 1880.              

The creators of this site—appellate attorney Colleen Ball and Wisconsin Supreme Court Commissioner Nancy Kopp—are mining a wealth of primary sources, many previously untapped, and they have already begun to present their findings serially in blog format. If you would like to see the revelations recently posted, and subscribe for alerts to forthcoming posts, visit “Lavinia Goodell: The private life and public trials of Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer.”