Why explore the lives of Montana’s early women lawyers?

+++++“The lives of early American women lawyers tell us about oppression and opportunity in an era little distant from our own. While they are not necessarily heroines, the struggles and progress of these women inform our understanding of what it is like to be a professional woman and to negotiate the perils, timetables, and satisfactions inherent in that status.”

Carol Sanger, “Curriculum Vitae (Feminae): Biography and Early American Women Lawyers,” 46 Stan. L. Rev. 1245 (1994); available http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=952029