Interviewer: Debbie Harwell

Project: University of Houston

Beverly Rudy discusses her early years growing up in Oklahoma and Arkansas. She left high school at the end of her junior year to attend the University of Texas. She married Ellis Rudy and moved to Houston where she completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Houston. Her husband contracted hepatitis causing Beverly to feel she needed a career and decided on law school. She discusses her experiences in law school, and her delay getting into the fail after failing the bar exam the first time. After taking an interest in helping non-profits, she decided to take the exam again and passed. Rudy details the challenges women faced in law school, her involvement in Kappa Beta Pi women’s legal sorority, discrimination such as having to sit outside the door of the bar association meetings held at the Houston Club because women were not allowed inside. She explains how certain fields of law were closed to women by the good-old-boy network; as a result she gave her criminal cases, for example, to Richard “Racehorse” Haynes. She discusses field that have emerged or expanded since she attended law school including juvenile law, oil and gas law, and arbitration. Two areas that she fought for women’s rights included marital property rights and representation on juries, pointing out the irony of being able to practice law in a courtroom where she would have been ineligible to sit on the jury because of her sex. Rudy also discusses the importance of women attorneys today continuing to mentor young women coming up in the field.