Ms. JD - History

History

Though women comprise approximately half of the student body of American law schools, they represent only 17% of partners at major law firms and less than a quarter of tenured law professors. Similarly, on the national level, we have had only one female U.S. Attorney General, three female Secretaries of State, three women Supreme Court Justices, and one acting Solicitor General. Concerned by the rates at which women opt out of the legal profession, the lack of representation of women in the highest courts and echelons of the legal community, and the role of gender in the progression of many women’s legal careers, a group of female law students from UC Berkeley, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, UT Austin, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Yale Law School came together and created Ms. JD in March 2006 at a two-day conference hosted by Stanford Law School. In 2006, Ms. JD incorporated in the state of California and received 501(c)(3) charitable status from the Internal Revenue Service. On March 31, 2007, Ms. JD publicly launched its website at a national conference co-hosted by Yale Law Women and hosted at Yale Law School. The Women’s Law School Coalition (WLSC) merged with Ms. JD in 2007.