Marin County Women Lawyers marks 50 years of mentorship, leadership

Lois Prentice combed through a Northern California phone book, contacted every woman lawyer she could find and invited them to join what she called the North Bay Women Lawyers.

Prentice was living in Marin County and practicing law in San Francisco when she realized she knew of no women lawyers' organization in the North Bay. On Sept. 26, 1976, she brought together the group that would become Marin County Women Lawyers.

Nineteen women became the organization's first members. The group was founded a year after Ann Diamond was elected the first woman president of the Marin County Bar Association. In 1983, the county's first two women judges were sworn in.

Marin County Women Lawyers celebrates its 50th anniversary with a dinner on Sept. 19, featuring guest speakers District Attorney Lori E. Frugoli, Judge Ahtossa Piroozfar Fullerton and Mary Grove, a former Superior Court commissioner.

Despite the name, the organization has members from several Northern California counties.

Prentice, admitted to the bar in 1965 and still holding active status, has been president of the group she founded six times.

"She's been on the board ever since it started, since its inception, and she is very, very prominent and proud," said current President Mary McLain. A founder and attorney-mediator at McLain Mediation, she joined Marin County Women Lawyers in the late 1980s.

McLain said the group facilitated a space of support, education and mentorship.

"I really believe that the secret superpower of Marin County Women Lawyers is that it really builds competence in leadership for those members and leaders within the organization," McLain said.

Mariah Noah of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP was searching for a professional community when she joined the organization. She became a lawyer in 2021, when pandemic-era remote work made it particularly difficult for a new attorney to find the mentorship she said the profession requires.

Noah, now vice president of the group, joined around 2023 after her boss suggested she attend a Bay Area Women Lawyers Network retreat. That is where she met Michelle Christovich, a former president of the organization, who encouraged her to attend a board meeting.

"Being able to be a part of an organization that brings lawyers together, brings women together ... just to socialize in the space where you can get that advice that you need and that mentorship and apprentice that this profession requires is something that is really important to me," Noah said.

Noah also reflected on last year's retreat hosted at McLain's house. "I was about to head into my very first trial and I was asking them, 'Do you have any advice?' And the whole table, just everyone, stopped talking about all their meetings and all their conversations for 20 minutes, just to go around the table and give me all the advice they had for all sorts of different types of trials," Noah said. "And I just remember feeling so supported."

The group offers more than advice on upcoming trials. Prentice said several members who wanted to become judges would ask for the group's endorsement.

"We interviewed them and made a decision whether we would," Prentice said.

McLain has also seen the organization's influence extend beyond its members. When her granddaughter was 13, she attended one of the group's Business and Professional Women's Dinners and confidently asked a question before an audience of about 100 people.

"To see the organization that had been part of my life for decades, and then to have my granddaughter in the audience participating," illustrated the effect the organization can have on the wider community, McLain said.

Noah noted that the dinners include all kinds of professionals. "I've personally seen a lot of people make connections that way of, 'Oh, I didn't realize there was someone else in my practice area' or 'I'm working on something new in this area and there is someone else who is in the business that I didn't know about," Noah said. "I really love that event every year."

McLain said the organization provides women in prison with library books. "We also support reproductive rights. We always have. As a part of our mission and every year, we have a lecture on the state of the uterus," McLain said.

Prentice, Noah and McLain said there is still work to be done.

Prentice said that many women are uninformed about legal matters, from health care to divorce.

"Those are things that we have to find ways to take care of," Prentice said. "We frequently have clinics for women over the years, but in my opinion, we need to have more in the future where any woman can come in and we can explain whatever issue she is having."

Marin County Women Lawyers members are optimistic about the organization's future.

"The women that are participating in Marin County Women Lawyers are very broad minded, expansive, involved, global citizens," McLain said. "So, I see that we can continue to provide necessary opportunities and support to women worldwide."

"What do I see in 50 years? I see an even stronger organization that continues to support women leadership."