20th-century American women lawyers

Mary Virginia Orozco was California’s first Latina female lawyer. She was also the first Latina to graduate from Loyola Law School.
She was born on September 24, 1928, in Whittier, California. Her parents were adamant that their children received a proper education. As an example, since Orozco’s parents were not property owners, they asked their landlord to obtain library cards for their children from the Whittier Public Library.
Orozco completed her undergraduate studies in psychology and sociology at the California State University, Los Angeles before attending Loyola Law School. Orozco worked full-time to support her immediate family while attending.
She was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1962 as the state’s first Latina lawyer. With the Spanish-speaking community as her major focus, Orozco set out to establish a legal practice that specialized in family, civil and criminal law. She eventually established the law firm Orozco & Orozco with her twin brother Hector. Orozco faced both racial and sex discrimination while practicing in the California courtrooms. In 1962, Orozco was a founder of the Mexican American Bar Association (MABA) in Los Angeles, and was a founding member for the Latina Lawyers Bar Association. She retired from practicing law in 1987.
Orozco died on June 5, 2019.

Margarete Berent (July 9, 1887, in Berlin – June 23, 1965, in New York), also known as Margareth Berent or Grete Berent in the United States, was the first woman lawyer in Prussia. She was the co-founder of the Association of Women Jurists and Association of German Women Academicians. As a Jew, she suffered from persecution during the Nazi Regime and fled via Switzerland, Italy, and Chile to the United States, where she finally arrived in 1940. After studying American law, she opened her second own law firm, now in the US, in 1951.

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.

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."

Laura Allison Wasser (born 1968) is an American attorney specializing in divorce and well-known for her celebrity clients. She currently is chief of divorce evolution for Divorce.com.