A Guide to the Bexar County Women's Bar Association Records, 1983-2001

Historical Note

The Bexar County Women's Bar Association (BCWBA) was started in late 1982 and incorporated in 1988. The mission of the Association is to bring together women attorneys, legal assistants and law students in Bexar County and to provide a local forum for the exchange of dialogue and ideas relevant to women in the legal profession. The earliest motivations for organization were a desire to see a woman appointed to an open County Court judicial bench in Bexar County and to see more women gain leadership positions in the San Antonio Bar Association. Olga Brown organized the initial social in 1983 to gauge interest in forming an organization. Of the 77 original members of BCWBA, three were men. Membership is open to any women in the Bexar County area legal community, and by 1997 amounted to between 400 and 500 people. BCWBA published its first newsletter in 1984. In 1993, the name of the newsletter changed from Bexar County Women's Bar Association Newsletter to Equal Times®.

The association is governed by a board of directors comprised of officers elected from the general membership, committee chairs, an association historian and a community liaison. Regular committees of BCWBA include Membership, Newsletter, Newsletter Advertisement, Luncheons, Public Relations, Bench Brunch, Social and Roundtable. Officers and directors assemble monthly for board meetings, while the membership in general meets many times throughout the year for social, educational, and professional programs relating to the roles of women's in the legal profession. The programming includes luncheons, lectures by outside speakers, and retreats. Since its inception, BCWBA has implemented many important projects. In 1984, a BCWBA committee designed a child support formula for Bexar County, which the District Judges accepted. It served as a model for the child support formula eventually set by the Texas Supreme Court. In 1990, BCWBA saw the opening of the Teddy Bear Room in the Bexar County Justice Center, a special waiting room initiated by the association for children (trial witnesses and others) in the District Attorney's Office.

BCWBA also lobbied in 1990 for amendments to the San Antonio Bar Association (SABA) bylaws to allow presidents of all local minority bar associations as non-voting members of the SABA board. At the same time, BCWBA also worked for minority representation on the Texas Young Lawyers Association Board. In 1994, a BCWBA group joined other Texas women bar leaders to form the Texas Women's Bar Association. Also in 1994, for the first time five women were nominated to four director positions in the San Antonio Bar Association, thereby advancing one of the original goals of BCWBA.

The longest running and most successful of the projects undertaken by BCWBA is the Annual Bench Brunch. Starting in 1983 in an effort to keep the Women's Law Center from closing, the first Bench Brunch raised $5,000 and successfully met its goal. The Bench Brunch has two foci: to raise money for various charities and to honor women judges in Texas. The program of Bench Brunches includes the presentation of awards, the introduction of honorees, an auction, a raffle and a guest speaker. Past guest speakers include former Texas Governor Ann Richards, former Texas State Attorney General Dan Morales, and former Dean of the Law School at St. Mary's University Barbara Bader Aldave among others.

The BCWBA attributes it success to remaining non-partisan, while supporting the efforts of all its members to achieve leadership roles. As of 1997, the Bexar County Women's Bar Association continues to be an active and on-going presence in San Antonio.

New accessions will continue to be added to these records.

Scope and Contents Note

The records of the Bexar County Women's Bar Association consist of founding and incorporation documents, bylaws, minutes, reports, correspondence, printed material, membership information, directories, newsletters, newspaper clippings, and ephemera documenting the inception, daily function, monthly meetings, and projects of this San Antonio women's organization. The collection is arranged into eight series reflecting the group's organizational structure and conforming as much as was possible to the original order in which it was accessioned.

The Founding/Incorporation Documents and Bylaws, describe the legal status and governing structure of the organization. The Board of Directors Minutes and Agendas as well as the Newsletters offer insight into the interests, concerns and activities of the organization, while the Treasurer's Reports document in detail the expenses of maintaining a medium sized civic and professional organization.

The Correspondence series, consisting largely of facsimile memoranda, documents the favored style of communication employed by officers and committee chairs. Membership Information and Directories provide demographic information about individual members of the organization.

The bulk of the Projects series documents the annual Bench Brunch charity event, the most important activity in the organization's agenda. Files maintained by the Elder Law Committee make up the rest of this series. The remainder of the collection is comprised of Ephemera: photographs, fliers, brochures, invitations and other information of this nature.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions on these materials.

Permission to Publish

Permission to publish materials from the collection must be obtained from Archives and Special Collections, Library, University of Texas at San Antonio.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Bexar County Women's Bar Association Records, 1983-2001, MS 9, Archives and Special Collections, Library, University of Texas at San Antonio.

Provenance

Records were donated in 1994 by the Bexar County Women's Bar Association.

Processing Information

Processed by Laura Micham, Processing Archivist, June 1997.

Detailed Description of the Records