New England Law, Boston

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. Beginning in 1920, Portia graduates received the LLB degree. When the school moved into its first permanent building in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, enrollment had reached 228, and the results from the December 1921 Massachusetts bar exam indicated that all the women who passed were graduates of the school. In 1938, Portia Law School became coeducational, and in 1969, the school was renamed New England School of Law and granted accreditation by the American Bar Association. The school was relocated to Boston’s Park Square area in the 1980s and was elected to the Association of American Law Schools in 1998. At the advent of the school’s second century in 2008, the name evolved to New England Law | Boston, celebrating the incredible urban environment in which the school flourishes.