Lidia Poet

Lidia Poet, who lived from August 26, 1855, to February 25, 1949, is regarded as the first modern female Italian lawyer. She earned her law degree from the University of Turin in 1881 and was enrolled at the Turin bar in 1883, but Italy's attorney general challenged her admission on the grounds that women were barred from the judiciary, and in 1884 the Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed her disbarment. Poet continued to do substantive legal work out of the office of her brother Enrico, a lawyer, even though male colleagues had to sign the documents and appear in court in her place. Her case helped drive later legal change, and after a 1919 law opened public office to women, Poet was formally reinstated and recognized as a lawyer by the Turin bar association in 1920, at the age of sixty-five. Her life later inspired the Netflix series The Law According to Lidia Poet.