About Selma

Click here for complete Biographical Outline (Curriculum Vitae)

Biographical Summary

Selma Moidel Smith, admitted to the bar in January 1943 at the age of 23, has been described as “an inspiration to all who know her.”  The Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles awarded her its first and only honorary life membership in recognition of her years of commitment and service, including two terms as president in 1947 and 1948.  As president, she created a program of continuing legal education for women lawyers — 45 years before it became mandatory in California.  One of her early efforts for women’s legal rights was to lobby the state legislature in support of the “Wives’ Paycheck Bill” (to give married women the right to collect their own paychecks), which was signed by Governor Earl Warren in 1951.  The following year, she served as president of the Los Angeles Business Women’s Council, which also awarded her a Life Membership “for Outstanding Service in Behalf of California Women.”

In the same year of 1943, Selma joined the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL), where she has chaired or served on more than 20 different committees.  In 1999, she was honored with NAWL’s Lifetime of Service Award and in 2005 with the creation of its annual Selma Moidel Smith Law Student Writing Competition in women and the law.  In 2017, Selma was the subject of the cover story, “A Conversation with Selma Moidel Smith,” by President-Elect Sarretta McDonough in NAWL’s Women Lawyers Journal.  Among her services to women in the law is her authorship of articles in the Women Lawyers Journal on the history of women lawyers, including the Centennial History of NAWL and her original research discovering the identities of the first two women admitted to membership in the American Bar Association in 1918.  

In 1953, Selma was invited by the president of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania to become a charter member of the National Board of “Ambassadors of Goodwill” of the college, which was founded in 1850 to enable women to train as physicians.  She served two years as president in 1980 to 1982, and she was the only National Board member to serve throughout the board’s entire 50-year history, delivering the valedictory address when the board declared its mission accomplished in 2003.

She is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, which created for her its Inaugural Life Fellow Achievement Award in 2016 for “a lifetime of extraordinary leadership, not only within the legal profession, but throughout the larger community and beyond.”  In the ABA Senior Lawyers Division, she served as the first woman chair of the editorial board of Experience magazine and on the governing council and in other offices.  She was selected as one of 107 “women pioneers in the legal profession nationwide” to be interviewed for the ABA Women Trailblazers in the Law Oral History Project (now hosted online by Stanford Law School Library).

Internationally, her paper on legal education (advocating clinical training in law schools), presented by invitation at the 1948 Conference of the International Bar Association at The Hague, was adopted by resolution.  She has held many posts with the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), including service at their conferences in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean.  For service to international understanding, she was decorated in 1956 with La Orden del Mérito Juan Pablo Duarte by the Dominican Republic.  At the Washington World Conference on World Peace Through Law in 1965 (chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren), she was appointed to the Spanish-Language Reception Committee and represented FIDA, the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, NAWL, and Iota Tau Tau international women’s legal scholastic society.  Locally, she has used her gift of language to reach out to the Latin-American community to engage in both legal and cultural projects.

As of 2019, Selma has served for 11 years as the first woman editor-in-chief of California Legal History, the annual scholarly journal of the California Supreme Court Historical Society, where she is also a board member.  In 2007, she initiated a law student writing competition in California legal history for the Society, which she continues to conduct each year.  At her 95th birthday celebration in April 2014, the Society renamed the competition in her honor.  The principal speakers at the celebration were Chief Justice of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Associate Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, former Chief Justice Ronald M. George, and former Associate Justice Joseph R. Grodin.

Selma is also a composer, with more than 100 piano and instrumental pieces, and is listed in the International Encyclopedia of Women Composers (1987).  Her music has been performed widely, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and by the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall.  In addition to concerts for the public, Selma’s music has been performed at events of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Lawyers Club, Los Angeles County Law Library, Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the American Bar Foundation.