TEN WOMEN IN U.S. LEGAL HISTORY #4: Ada Kepley (February 11, 1847 – June 3, 1925) was the first American woman to graduate from law school. Born in Ohio in 1847, Ada married Henry B. Kepley, an attorney with his own practice in Illinois. At his urging, Ada attended the Union College of Law in Effingham, Illinois (now known as Northwestern University Law School). As a woman, Ada was denied a law license until 1881, when Illinois overturned the law barring women from practicing. She also obtained a Ph.D. from Austin College and was an ordained Unitarian minister. Ultimately, Ada’s true legacy was not in the legal field, but in her passion for women’s sufferage and the prohibition movement, gaining national recognition for her work in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Woman Suffrage Association. Ada died as a charity case in St. Anthony’s Memorial hospital in Illinois in 1925.