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Irvings follows her passions

By: Alison Henderson//June 23, 2016//

Irvings follows her passions

By: Alison Henderson//June 23, 2016//

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Ruth Irvings | Law Office of Ruth J. Irvings
Ruth Irvings | Law Office of Ruth J. Irvings

Ruth Irvings’ career lies where professional, political and personal matters meet.

Prompted by her passion for social justice, Irvings found herself working in Milwaukee at Legal Action of Wisconsin, a nonprofit law firm that offers services to low-income clients. Within seven years of her graduation from law school, she had become the law firm’s executive director, supervising 45 lawyers in seven different offices ranging from south of the Illinois border to Madison. She went on to private practice before helping to found the all-female firm Nelson, Irvings & Waeffler in 1998.

“And that’s how I got to where I am, starting as a child of the 60s, coming out of Stanford Law School ready to save the world,” Irvings deadpanned.

In 2014, she opened the Law Offices of Ruth J. Irvings, where she said she has been happily practicing trust administration, planning matters related to marital property, working with LGBT couples and doing estate planning. That last specialty she describes as “helping people define their legacy.”

“People tell me the most personal, the most intimate things in order to figure out what they want to have happen after their death,” she said. “I think it is so personal and that so much of being a good estate planner is being able to establish a rapport to listen to them, to understand what is the goal and then using your expertise to be able to accomplish the goal.”

And it’s no surprise that, through her work, the Milwaukee estate planner has established quite the legacy of her own.

Irvings’ former law partner, Carol Wessels, said Irvings sets the standard for what constitutes an ethical, brilliant and compassionate practice. Wessels said Irvings was a mentor who demonstrated how to maintain both a practice and the highest standards.

Irvings is a founding member and former president of Sojourner Family Peace Center, Milwaukee’s first shelter for battered women, and has served on the boards of the Mental Health Association in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Jewish Council, Milestones Programs for Children, the Jewish Home and Care Center Foundation, and Fair Wisconsin Education Fund. She now helps lead the Congregation Shalom Community Relations Council.

She has been a central figure in representing same-sex and other non-marital couples and was involved in drafting Wisconsin’s 2008 Domestic Partnership Act.

“I recall her spending many hours late into the evening on phone meetings with LGBT advocacy groups as the legal challenges facing the barriers to same-sex marriage in Wisconsin were waged,” Wessels said in a statement.

Irvings was able to enjoy the fruits of her labor when, two years ago, she married her partner of 32 years. She said she believes she and her partner, also a Women in the Law honoree, may be the first married couple to have both won the awards.

AWL selects Irvings as Woman of the Year

If the law was one of the final frontiers to be conquered by women in the 20th century, then Ruth Irvings was truly one of the pioneers.

From becoming the executive director of a law firm early in her career, to helping to found an all-female firm in 1998, to leading the charge in the fight to ensure members of the LGBT community enjoy equal rights under the law, Irvings has been a shining example of what women can accomplish in a profession that until recently had been open only to men. It is for those reasons that Irvings was selected among this year’s 36 Women in the Law honorees to be the Association of Women Lawyers’ choice for the Woman of the Year award.

AWL is the Wisconsin Law Journal’s event partner in these annual Women in the Law awards. In selecting this year’s recipient of this prestigious award, the criteria considered were:

  • The excellence shown in a legal career and the ways in which a particular candidate has set an example that inspires other women to take up the law as a profession.
  • The ways in which a candidate opened up doors for women lawyers in fields that were historically closed to women.
  • The ways in which a candidate served her profession or community in a manner that has benefited the legal profession as a whole.

The AWL judges felt that Irvings fit all the criteria, along with standing out in various other ways.

The judges particularly praised her for:

  • tackling legal issues affecting the LGBT community when no one else would;
  • starting an all-female law firm at a time when few women were even partners in law firms; and
  • committing her time and life to helping those with few advocates and continued to pursue change through her many volunteer activities.

The judges called Irvings a true trailblazer in estate planning and on behalf of women’s rights.

“Ruth’s nomination stood out and impressed me because not only was she the founder of an all-woman law firm where she was a mentor to other women attorneys, she has a demonstrated record of making her client’s interests her first concern,” said Jennifer Hong. “In addition to the practice of law, Ruth’s extensive community involvement shows an outstanding commitment to women’s issues.

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