In the 1950s, law schools that admitted women had two or fewer women students in each class. One-fifth of law schools then had no women students. By 2016 there had been an astounding flip, and there were more women in law schools than men. In 2023, women accounted for 56% of law school students. During the same years women also began to enter the legal profession.

The Honorable Carolyn Engel Temin, former Judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, has been a criminal justice trailblazer. She received her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1958 and was the first woman lawyer ever to be hired by the Defender Association of Philadelphia. She served as a Judge for twenty-nine years and was the first women elected president of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges. She has also served as Chair of the National Conference of State Trial Judges and President of the National Association of Women Judges and is a Life Member of the American Law Institute. After stepping down from the Common Pleas bench, Judge Temin served in Sarajevo as an International Judge on the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2018, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner appointed Temin to be his First Assistant District Attorney.

Judge Temin has taught, lectured and consulted on legal issues and judicial systems around the world. In 2000 Judge Temin received the Anne X. Alpern award by the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, an award given to a female lawyer or judge who demonstrates excellence in the legal profession and who makes a significant professional impact on women in the law. The Judge is the principal author of the Pennsylvania Benchbook for Criminal Proceedings and edited a similar publication on both Civil and Criminal Proceedings for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Judge Temin will talk about some of her most meaningful experiences and share her observations and wit about the amazing entry of women into the legal profession.