The American Bar Association Women Trailblazers Law Project has selected Stetson University College of Law professor Lizabeth Moody to be included among women who made history in the legal profession. Moody’s oral history of her extraordinary legal career will be housed at the Library of Congress, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University, and on the ABA website.

Moody is a Distinguished University Professor at Stetson Law and was the school’s vice president and dean from 1994-1999, opening the state-of-the art Dolly & Homer Hand Law Library and laying the foundation for the college’s part-time law and international programs. She was honored by the Baltic state of Estonia’s Higher Education Accreditation Centre in March 2000 for her efforts in legal higher education.

Moody was one of only seven women in her class of 160 Yale Law graduates, and before entering the teaching profession, she opened doors for women in the legal profession.

“I wanted to be a lawyer more than anything in the world,” Moody explained.

Moody was one of the first women lawyers rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell and was the first woman to be elected president of the Cleveland Bar Association. In spite of the era’s notorious “glass ceiling” for female lawyers, Moody made partner decades ago at the prominent Cleveland law firm of Metzenbaum, Gaines & Stern. While teaching at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Moody and Professor Jane Picker created the Women’s Law Fund, Inc., the first law firm in the nation to specialize in sex-discrimination cases, in 1972.

“Lizabeth Moody’s achievements as a leader in women’s legal history are remarkable,” said Stetson Law Dean Christopher Pietruszkiewicz, who began serving as dean at Stetson Law in June. “I am extremely proud that she is a member of the Stetson Law faculty, where she serves as a mentor to her students and as an inspiration to her colleagues.”

Previously, Moody received the Josephine Irwin Award honoring women who have championed social justice for women, the American Bar Association Section of Business Law honored Moody with the Glass Cutter Award for her extraordinary efforts in paving the way for other women in the legal profession, and she was honored with the Ohio State Bar Medal, the association’s highest honor. The city of Cleveland, Ohio, named the day of May 8, 1990, in honor of Lizabeth A. Moody.

Professor Moody teaches at Stetson Law in the area of corporate and securities law, with an emphasis on nonprofit corporations and professional responsibility. She was inducted into Stetson Law’s Hall of Fame in 2009. Stetson Law Professor Ellen S. Podgor interviewed Moody for the oral history submission.