20th-century American lawyers

Arville Lynn Funk (1929–1990) was a lawyer, teacher, author, and an Indiana historian. He was born in Harrison County, Indiana, the son of Herman E. and Elsie McGonigle Funk. He attended public school in Corydon and studied law in New Albany. He opened a law practice in Corydon where he lived most of his life.
A member of the Indiana Historical Society and the Harrison County Indiana Historical and Genealogical Society, Funk was most interested in Indiana's Civil War History. He authored several books about Indiana history and commonly wrote an abbreviated version of his larger works dedicated to Harrison County topics. His many books include:

Tales of Our Hoosier Heritage (1965)
Indiana's Birthplace: a History of Harrison County, Indiana (1966)
Our Historic Corydon (1966)
Hoosiers in the Civil War (1967)
Harrison County in the Indiana Sesquicentennial Year (1967)
A Sketchbook of Indiana History (1969)
The Morgan Raid in Indiana and Ohio (1971)
Historical Almanac of Harrison County, Indiana (1974)
Squire Boone in Indiana (1974)
Revolutionary War Soldiers of Harrison County, Indiana (1975)
Revolutionary War Era in Indiana (1975)
The Battle of Corydon (1976)
Harrison County in the Indiana Sesquicentennial Year (1976)
A Hoosier Regiment in Dixie: A History of the Thirty-Eighth Indiana Regiment (1978)
The Hoosier Scrapbook (1981)He coauthored Indiana's Birthplace: A History of Harrison County, Indiana in 1966 and was a regular contributor the Indiana Magazine of History between 1950 and 1980. He was an advocate of county historical societies and oversaw the creation of historical societies in several Indiana counties.
From 1955 to 1965 he taught high school history. Funk married Rosemary E. Springer on August 25, 1956. They had two children, named Cynthia and Mark. He was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1963 and, in 1965, formed a partnership with Frank O'Bannon and C. Blaine Hays Jr.
Arville Funk died in 1990 and is buried in Corydon's Cedar Hill cemetery.

Frank David Padgett (March 9, 1923 – July 11, 2021) was an American judge and World War II B-24 bomber pilot. Padgett grew up during the Great Depression and earned a scholarship to Harvard College in Massachusetts. Before he could graduate however, he was called to active duty in the U.S. Army Air Force and for the next 13 months, trained as a pilot.

John Richard Rarick (January 29, 1924 – September 14, 2009) was an American lawyer, jurist, and World War II veteran who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Louisiana's 6th congressional district from 1967 to 1975.

Sam Houston Clinton, Jr. (September 17, 1923 – October 5, 2004) was a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge, who as a lawyer represented both atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Kilmer Blaine Corbin (June 18, 1919 – January 7, 1993), was an American politician and attorney who served in the Texas State Senate from 1949 to 1957.
Corbin was the father of actor Barry Corbin.

Nellie Jane Gray (1924 – August 13, 2012) was an American anti-abortion activist who founded the annual March for Life in 1974, in response to the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, which decriminalized abortion the previous year. The New York Times credits her with popularizing the term pro-life.

Monroe Mark Sweetland (January 20, 1910 – September 10, 2006) was an American politician in the state of Oregon. A native of the state, he served in both houses of the Oregon Legislative Assembly starting in 1953 for a total of ten years. A Democrat, he also twice ran and lost bids to serve as the Oregon Secretary of State and was a Democratic National Committeeman. Sweetland later served on the staff of the National Education Association, supporting passage of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968.

Seaborn Jesse Buckalew Jr. (December 6, 1920 – May 11, 2017) was an American lawyer, politician, and judge.

David William Crews (February 18, 1933 – February 8, 2015) was an American lawyer and politician from Texas.
Born in Karnes City, Texas, Crews received his bachelor's degree from Baylor University and his law degree from Baylor Law School. He practiced law in Conroe, Texas. From 1961 to 1969, Crews served in the Texas House of Representatives as a Democrat. Crews died in Conroe, Texas.

Ruby Kless Sondock (born April 26, 1926) is a former Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. She was the first woman to serve on the Texas Supreme Court.
Sondock initially attended the University of Houston Law Center in order to become a legal secretary, but she was admitted to the state bar a year before her graduation as valedictorian of her class (1962). Sondock was appointed to the Harris County Domestic Relations Court No. 5 in 1973 and to the 234th District Court in 1977. Sondock was the first woman to be appointed as a State District Judge in Harris County, Texas.
Sondock was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court following the death of Associate Justice James G. Denton on June 10, 1982. Sondock served from June 25 to December 31 of that year, completing Denton's term. Sondock declined to seek election to the Supreme Court and instead ran successfully for reelection to her District Court seat the following year. Sondock was the court's first female justice, with the exception of a special all-woman court convened in 1925 to hear a single case. Sondock formed part of the majority of the Texas Supreme Court in the landmark case of Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S. A. v. Hall.
A distinguished legal mind, Sondock has received a number of accolades, including an annual lecture series on legal ethics. Former speakers at the Sondock Lecture on Legal Ethics at the University of Houston Law Center include U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch and Helen Thomas. On November 11, 2015, the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas inducted Sondock as a "Texas Legal Legend."