The New York Times reports…….”Christine Beshar, one of the first women to be named partner in a Wall Street law firm, where she established a pioneering child-care service for its employees, died on Jan. 11 at her home in Manhattan. She was 88.”
We like the fact that she was at one time an assistant librarian and….An immigrant from Germany, Mrs. Beshar passed the New York bar exam in 1959 on her first try without having attended law school. She had clerked for her husband’s firm for four years. (Since then, some form of classroom study in a law school has been required to become an attorney in New York.)
Her death was confirmed by her son, Peter.
Mrs. Beshar, who specialized in trust and estate law, was practicing until her death at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which made her its first female partner in 1971, seven years after she was hired.
Almost 20 years later she pushed Cravath to become the first major New York firm to open its own child-care center for its working parents, an idea she had proposed. It began in 1989, after the firm had moved to midtown Manhattan from downtown, as an on-site backup service available to employees when other child-care arrangements fell through.
Mrs. Beshar’s proposal had been born of necessity. She had taken only a week or two of vacation time after the birth of each of her children, and one day her son’s babysitter failed to show up. In those days, parents rarely took their children to work.
More at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/obituaries/christine-beshar-trailblazing-lawyer-dies-at-88.html
