In 1908, two Boston women were determined to sit for the Massachusetts bar examination. A lawyer named Arthur Winfield MacLean agreed to tutor them, and other students followed over the next few years until finally a school was established. MacLean’s wife dubbed it Portia Law School after the heroine of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” Arthur MacLean became the school’s first dean as Portia became the first institution in the history of law schools devoted exclusively to the education of women.
