Selma Moidel Smith—a legal practitioner, bar leader, author/editor, and composer of musical works—has died at the age of 106.
She became a lawyer in 1943 and maintained active bar status for 43 years. Smith served two terms as president of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, in 1947 and 1948, and was the group’s only honorary life member.
Until 2002, at the age off 103, she was editor of California Legal History, the journal of the California Supreme Court’s Historical Society.
Smith wrote more than 100 musical compositions. They have been played by orchestras across the nation, including the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic.
She was known as a “Renaissance Woman.”
Below, there appears a eulogy delivered yesterday by her son and only surviving family member, architect/historian Mark L. Smith.
Read the Eulogy
