She practiced in Dobson, in partnership with her brother, Samuel L. Holton, devoting herself chiefly to office work and the preparation of civil cases, until a short time before her death. Ada H. Kepley, of Effingham, Illinois, was the first woman to graduate from a law school in this or any other country. She took her degree in June, 1870, from the Union College of Law, Chicago. The major part of law schools of the United States now freely admit women when applied to for that purpose. Among those still refusing are the law departments of Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown universities, and Columbia College; the Cumberland University Law School of Lebanon, Tennessee, the Law Department of the Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and the Law Department of the University of Virginia. “One woman, however, does wear the honors of the degree of Bachelor of Laws as conferred by Yale. This is Alice R. Jordan, now Mrs. Blake, who, after a year of study in the Law School of Michigan University and admission to the bar of Michigan in June, 1885, entered the Law School at Yale in the fall of the same year, and graduated at the close of the course with the degree as already stated. Dean Wayland, of Yale Law School, sends me a catalogue of the University, and writes that the marked paragraph on page 25 is intended to prevent a repetition of the Jordan incident. The paragraph referred to appears on the page devoted to departments of instruction, and reads: ‘It is to be understood that the courses of instruction above described are open to persons of the male sex only, except where both sexes are specifically included.’”—(Lelia J. Robinson, LL.B., in an article on “Women Lawyers in the United States,” in _The Green Bag_, January, 1890.) As to the relative standing of the sexes as students in law schools, Hon. Henry Wade Rogers, dean of the department of law of Michigan University, says: “The women who have attended the Law School have compared favorably in the matter of scholarship with the men. They are just as capable of acquiring legal knowledge as men are.” This law school has graduated more women than any other in the country. Hon. Henry Booth, dean of Union College of Law, gives the standing of women in scholarship as that of a fair average, and says: “We discover no difference in the capacity of the sexes to apprehend and apply legal principles. We welcome ladies to the school and regard their presence an advantage in promoting decorum and good order.” A law school for women has recently been opened in New York City. Its founder is Madame Emile Kempin-Spyri, a graduate of the School of Jurisprudence, of the University of Zurich, in 1887. Her application for admission to the order of advocates of her native country, Switzerland, being denied, she emigrated to the United States. She is the counsel of the Swiss Legation in Washington.[161]