Clara Foltz was one of the first women lawyers in the United States, and for a time one of the most famous. From the day of her admission to the Bar in 1878, she was often in the news - arguing to all-male juries, stumping in political campaigns, working for woman suffrage, penal reform and other causes. She had a large part in the adoption of the first guaranties of equal access to employment and education in U.S. constitutional history, pioneered the public defender movement and practiced law continuously for fifty years.

In everything she did, Foltz enjoyed remarkable celebrity, due in part to the human interest of her personal situation. She was a single mother of five children and became a lawyer in order to support them as well as to find personal fulfillment and advance women's rights.