Former CHBA president Dolores Atencio has been selected as one of the recipients of the prestigious 2024 Margaret Brent Lawyers of Achievement Award. The ABA Commission on Women annually presents the award for professional excellence and paving the way for other women in the legal profession. She and the other four recipients will be honored at the annual ABA meeting in Chicago on August 4th. Dolores was nominated by the HNBA with the CHBA’s support. In 2015, Dolores created the national legal history project, Luminarias de la Ley | Luminaries of the Law™ (Luminarias Project) to identify and chronicle the accomplishments of the first Latina lawyers in the country. Key findings from her seven-year study were published in Luminarias: An Empirical Portrait of the First Generation of Latina Lawyers 1880-1980, 39 UCLA Chicanx Latinx Law Rev. 1 (Sept. 2023), available at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43f12635
Carolina Academic Press will be publishing her first book later this year, “The Illustrious Impact of Luminarias on the Law: The Legal Handicraft of the First Latina Article III Judges and State Supreme Court Justices”. Dolores is recognized as the national expert on the history of Latina lawyers in the United States which was, in part, the basis for her selection. She is the first Latina lawyer in Colorado to receive the Margaret Brent Award and joins two other Colorado women lawyer recipients, former Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubovsky and former ABA President Karen Mathis. Dolores’ article on the first Colorado Luminarias will be published online by the Colorado Lawyer https://maestro.abanet.org/list/inxsxxpc/240311AT/57hmm7yrct32.vib?a0=19688&a1