SAN FRANCISCO — When Herma Hill Kay decided in sixth grade that she would go to law school, it was a radical notion for the mid-1940s. “Girls can’t make a living practicing law,” her mother told her. But Kay didn’t want to become a dancer or a nurse like all the other little girls in her class, she recalled during a recent conversation at the Metropolitan Club in San Francisco. “I didn’t want to be like everyone else.”
During her long career, Kay, 75, has found her mother had been right almost as much as she’d been wrong. Early on, for instance, she could neither get a job clerking at the U.S. Supreme Court nor an entry-level position at a Wall Street law firm. But she also outpaced her mother’s modest expectations by becoming the second woman to join UC-Berkeley School of Law’s faculty and later serving as the school’s first woman dean. She’s now in her 50th year of teaching at Berkeley.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
