{"id":814259,"date":"2026-10-26T09:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T09:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/814259\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T09:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T09:02:11","slug":"legally-blonde-at-25-lawyers-inspired-by-reese-witherspoons-elle-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/814259\/","title":{"rendered":"Legally Blonde at 25: Lawyers inspired by Reese Witherspoon&#8217;s Elle Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">According to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, in 2001, the year Legally Blonde was released, 43% of solicitors in England and Wales were women. As of last year, women made up  63% of solicitors the Law Society found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Deputy Vice President of the society Dana Denis-Smith, said many women still feel like they do not belong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;My whole legal career tracks Legally Blonde because I started my legal education 25 years ago, about three months after it came out,&#8221; the 51-year-old from the Transylvania region of Romania said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Previous to this film, a lot of the women in law portrayed in film were very hard women. They had to play hardball.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dana said women have only been able practice law since around 1922. And when the first generation entered the profession they faced ridicule and questions around what they would wear and how they would behave, as well as discrimination around the types of work they could do.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was about what was considered suitable for a woman,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Legally Blonde broke with that tradition of &#8216;you can&#8217;t be feminine and successful&#8217;. I think it was a very pivotal moment for women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Before you would hide away your children and not talk about your family life. There was a sense that you had to really separate your professional identity,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, in 2001, the year Legally Blonde was released, 43% of solicitors in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-814259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}