A Woman’s Place Is in the Clinic
Nellie MacNamara
Nellie MacNamara (1888-1959) became the first female director of the legal clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
MacNamara graduated with honors in 1917 from the Law School. After briefly practicing law in Kalispell, MT, she returned to Chicago in 1919 and took a position with the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau. Part of the United Charities of Chicago, the organization offered services to approximately 18,000 clients each year. Through this work, MacNamara found herself back at Northwestern Law—this time as an instructor.
The Northwestern Law Bulletin for the 1929-1930 academic year introduces MacNamara to the faculty roster as part of the James Nelson and Anna Louisa Raymond Foundation’s staff for the legal clinic. At the time, clinical education was relatively new and still evolving, offering MacNamara an opportunity to shape legal education not only at Northwestern Pritzker Law but potentially at law schools across the country.
“In legal clinic a young man for the first time, sees ‘law in action’—sees it as it is applied to an individual through its rules of evidence, pleading and practice, as it affects the well-being of the community,” MacNamara said in her article “Teaching Legal Ethics by the Clinical Method.”
The Raymond Foundation staff was small, comprising a managing attorney, an instructor, an investigator, and a clerk. As the instructor, MacNamara worked with students in the civil branch of the clinic at Legal Aid. She was promoted to assistant professor of law in 1936, at which point she was in charge of both the civil and industrial branches of the clinic. (Another professor led the criminal law branch.)
Lowered student enrollment during the Second World War led to a halt in the clinic’s work, and the Law School placed MacNamara on leave of absence. While away, she entered the private sector as an attorney at Montgomery Ward and Company. Although unclear when the shift took place, it appears that MacNamara had sometime previously taken over leadership of the clinical program at the Law School, making her the first woman to do so.
Upon her return after the war, the President’s Report stated, “Assistant Professor Nellie MacNamara has returned to continue the direction of the legal clinic. […] With the assistance of Professor Stephen Love she is undertaking a reorganization of the work of the Clinic so as to obtain the services of a number of the alumni who are in practice in Chicago.” This work resulted in a unified clinic, mandatory for all students not taking part in the journals, that continued its external partnership with the Legal Aid.
The clinic continued under her leadership until 1954, when she stepped down to the position of lecturer in transition to her retirement the following year.
Recommended Resources
The Beaumont Enterprise, accessed via Newsbank or here.
Bradway, John S. “Progress in Legal Aid Clinic Work.” Journal of Legal Education 7 (1954): 204-209.
Hunter, Joel D. “The Legal Clinic of Northwestern University School of Law.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951) 32, no. 3 (1941): 272-74.
MacNamara, Nellie. “Teaching Legal Ethics by the Clinical Method.” American Law School Review 8, no. 3 (May 1935): 241-245.
The Pritzker Legal Research Center Archives and its digital platform, plrccollections.org.
“The Star of Unconquered Will.” Women Lawyers’ Journal 23, no. 2 (1937): 15-18.
On December 18, 1927, the Beaumont Enterprise, a newspaper from MacNamara’s native Texas, reported that “Nellie says when but 12 years old she went around announcing her two ambitions–to become a lawyer and to never have “Mrs.” on her tombstone.” She achieved both ambitions throughout the course of her life.