Interview with Judge Alexandra D. DiPentima
IntervieweeInterview with
Alexandra D. DiPentima
American, born 1953
InterviewerInterviewed by
Kathryn Calibey
Date2016 October 26
DimensionsDuration: 8 Minutes, 59 Seconds
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineGift of the Connecticut Bar Foundation
DescriptionOral history interview with Judge Alexandra D. DiPentima who was interviewed by Kathryn Calibey on October 26, 2016 for the Connecticut Bar Foundation's History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project.
Topics Discussed:
- Family and Childhood Background: Alexandra Davis DiPentima was born and raised in Kent, Connecticut. Her father was an English teacher and department chairman at Kent School.
- Education: She attended Kent School, a boarding prep school, from age 14 for four years. After Kent School, she attended Princeton University, graduating in 1975. She chose Princeton partly because her father had attended there. She majored in intellectual history, focusing on the history of ideas in Europe. At Princeton in 1971, during the end of the Vietnam War, she became involved in music, joining the co-ed Glee Club and an all-women acappella group.
- Gap Year Experience: After graduating from Princeton, she took a gap year. She moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to live with her sister and worked with a professor at Johns Hopkins University in field research and surveying patients inner-city Baltimore and Columbia, Maryland
- Marriage: During her gap year, she met her husband, Anthony DiPentima, a practicing attorney in Hartford, through a softball league, and they married a couple of years later.
- Law School: She started law school in the fall of 1976 at the University of Connecticut Law School. There were a significant number of women in her class.
- Current Involvement with Law School: As of 2012, she has been an adjunct professor at UConn School of Law, co-teaching Connecticut Civil Procedure with Chief Justice Chase Rogers every other year.
- Law Students (Then vs. Now): She observes the size and technology of current law school classes.
- Bar Admission and Early Career: She became a member of the Connecticut Bar in October 1979, after taking the bar exam in July 1979. She was sworn in by Judge Norris O'Neill in the Litchfield Judicial District Court. Her first job was with Connecticut Legal Services in Willimantic. She was often handling cases primarily related to spousal abuse, contested custody divorces, and housing.
Topics Discussed:
- Family and Childhood Background: Alexandra Davis DiPentima was born and raised in Kent, Connecticut. Her father was an English teacher and department chairman at Kent School.
- Education: She attended Kent School, a boarding prep school, from age 14 for four years. After Kent School, she attended Princeton University, graduating in 1975. She chose Princeton partly because her father had attended there. She majored in intellectual history, focusing on the history of ideas in Europe. At Princeton in 1971, during the end of the Vietnam War, she became involved in music, joining the co-ed Glee Club and an all-women acappella group.
- Gap Year Experience: After graduating from Princeton, she took a gap year. She moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to live with her sister and worked with a professor at Johns Hopkins University in field research and surveying patients inner-city Baltimore and Columbia, Maryland
- Marriage: During her gap year, she met her husband, Anthony DiPentima, a practicing attorney in Hartford, through a softball league, and they married a couple of years later.
- Law School: She started law school in the fall of 1976 at the University of Connecticut Law School. There were a significant number of women in her class.
- Current Involvement with Law School: As of 2012, she has been an adjunct professor at UConn School of Law, co-teaching Connecticut Civil Procedure with Chief Justice Chase Rogers every other year.
- Law Students (Then vs. Now): She observes the size and technology of current law school classes.
- Bar Admission and Early Career: She became a member of the Connecticut Bar in October 1979, after taking the bar exam in July 1979. She was sworn in by Judge Norris O'Neill in the Litchfield Judicial District Court. Her first job was with Connecticut Legal Services in Willimantic. She was often handling cases primarily related to spousal abuse, contested custody divorces, and housing.
Object number2024.38.35a-b
NotesProject Overview: At the turn of the 20th century, other than Mary Hall, women lawyers were virtually unknown in Connecticut. By contrast, at the turn of the 21st century, law schools were enrolling roughly the same number of women as men. Since their earliest time at the bar, women have become leaders in all areas of the profession at a pace out of all proportion to their brief history and number. In 1999, the Fellows of the Connecticut Bar Foundation initiated the Oral History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project. Within the framework of this dynamic project, the Fellows have been creating a permanent video, audio, and photographic historical record of milestone achievements of women as they have become more visible and achieved prominence in the field of law. In 2019, a leadership donation of $20,000 from the law firm of Carmody Torrance Sandak & Hennessey enabled the project to significantly broaden its scope and plan for the future.
Through its first two phases, the project worked with award-winning documentarian Karyl Evans and attorney/photographer Isabel Chenoweth to produce fifty-eight oral history interviews with outstanding female attorneys and 118 portraits of women in the Connecticut judiciary.
The oral history interviews have collected the stories of women whose ingenuity, perseverance, and intelligence dismantled barriers that historically prevented women from pursuing careers in the law. Connecticut has benefited from the efforts of these “pioneers” as they enriched the legal profession by joining the ranks of their male peers and paved the way for more women to join the profession. (Source: Connecticut Bar Foundation)
Subject Terms
- Women
- Lawyers
- Women lawyers
- Oral history
- Interview films
- Interview transcripts
- Interviews
- Oral narratives
- Attorneys
- Kent (Conn.)
- Education
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975
- Music
- Softball
- University of Connecticut
- Law schools
- Technology
- Litchfield (Conn.)
- Divorce
- Judges
- Family
- Kent School (Kent, Conn.)
- Marriage
- Professors
- Students
- Connecticut Legal Services (CLS)
- Interviews and Oral Histories
- History of Connecticut Women in the Legal Profession Project
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