VERMILLION, S.D. (KELO) — It’s what could someday be remembered as “The Decade of the Female Lawyer” according to a report by the American Bar Association.
Since 2016, the legal profession has started to shift from being male dominated to a female majority. It states that in 2016, women became a majority of law school students.
The Knudson School of Law at the University of South Dakota is seeing changes, too.
“Our current classes are usually 80 to 85 students. We have just over 250 total students right now,” Dean Neil Fulton said. “Over the last six years, the percentage of that class that has been women has oscillated from 40 to 60 percent.”
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Dean Fulton said enrollment varies from year to year. He said part of the reason for the increase in female students could be that more women are seeing other women in leadership roles within the profession.
“I was a paralegal at a law firm in Sioux City,” third year law student Cortni Bowman said. “After doing that for several years, I just had kind of a realization within myself that I could do that. I had great female attorneys that I worked for, and the only thing that separated us was a law degree.”
Even in years when the number of women decreases, the contributions of female law students continue at the South Dakota law school. Students like Julianne Severson, who is on the moot court board, continue to lead in the law school community.
“It is interesting to see that. I think a lot of us women are holding most of those leadership positions, at least the moot court board. There’s seven of us in my class, and there’s only one male in those seven positions,” Severson said.
Continuing the upward trend of women in law, starts with encouraging more women to enter the field.
“I think that the law is an incredibly rewarding profession. I just think that when more people have the opportunity and see it, they’re going to go into the legal profession,” Dean Fulton said.
According to the ABA, women could also become a majority of full-time law school faculty members by the end of 2025.
