When I was a child, I used to look at the pictures of local attorneys in the Waukesha County Bar Association on the wall of my father’s and grandfather’s law office. One attorney stood out to me among all the others: a woman named Lois Kuenzli Collins. She was the only woman in the bar photos from my grandfather’s era. I wondered who she was and what motivated her to become a lawyer.

Collins practiced with her husband, Vincent Collins, in Waukesha in the mid-1900s. She was one of the first women to practice law in Wisconsin. Recently I had the chance to speak with Collins’ daughter, Patricia Andringa, about her mother’s work and life as an early woman lawyer in Wisconsin.

Collins graduated from Waukesha High School in three years in 1923. She attended Marquette University and graduated in four years in 1927 with both an undergraduate and law degree. She met her husband while at Marquette, and they graduated together.