Jeanne Chauvin

Jeanne Chauvin, who lived from April 22, 1862, to September 7, 1926, was a French lawyer and one of the first women to practice law in France. Born in Jargeau, she earned a doctoral degree in law from the Faculty of Law of Paris in 1890, becoming the second woman in France to hold that degree, and completed a further doctoral thesis in 1892 on women access to the professions. Her 1897 application for admission to the Paris bar was initially rejected, but a law passed on December 1, 1900, opened the profession of advocate to women holding a law degree, and Chauvin took her oath before the Court of Appeal of Paris on December 19, 1900, thirteen days after Olga Petit, making her the second woman authorized to practice law in France. She made her first court appearance on January 21, 1901, before the ninth chamber of the Criminal Court, spent much of her career teaching law to secondary school girls and representing unmarried mothers seeking child support, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in January 1926.