Famous Female Characters Who Shaped Legal History and Pop Culture

By Lily Fredericks*

With March being Women’s History Month, there is no better time to remind ourselves of the female legal characters in television and movies that we all know and love. From Elle Woods’ pink-powered brilliance to Annalise Keating’s fierce courtroom strategies, female legal characters in pop culture have played a major role in shaping the public’s perception of women in the law. Whether reinforcing stereotypes or breaking them down, these characters influence societal expectations, inspire real-life female lawyers, and reflect the evolving challenges of the legal profession regarding gender dynamics.

I. Elle Woods (Legally Blonde) – The Power of Authenticity

At first glance, Elle Woods seems like an unlikely Harvard Law student. However, Legally Blonde subverts expectations by proving that femininity, smarts, and professional drive can coexist.¹ Elle’s journey is more than just a feel-good story—it has real-world implications. In fact, Legally Blonde can be said to have influenced an entire generation of female lawyers, many of whom cite Elle as an inspiration to pursue legal careers​.²

Beyond her cultural impact, Elle represents an alternative vision of success in the law.³ Instead of conforming to the traditional masculine archetype of the legal profession, she triumphs by embracing kindness, community, and integrity​.⁴ This challenges the hypercompetitive, often toxic culture of law school and the legal practice​.⁵

II. Gracie Hart (Miss Congeniality) – The Double Standard of Femininity

Gracie Hart, an FBI agent forced to go undercover as a beauty queen, grapples with expectations of femininity in Miss Congeniality.⁶ Her story mirrors the real-world challenges many female professionals face: being seen as either “too feminine” to be taken seriously or “too masculine” to be accepted.⁷ Legal scholar Anna M. Archer critiques such portrayals, arguing that movies like Legally Blonde and Miss Congeniality may reinforce the idea that women must change themselves to fit into male-dominated spaces​.⁸

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects women from discrimination based on gender stereotypes, but pop culture often overlooks these legal protections​.⁹ Instead of showing legal solutions, films sometimes depict heroines adapting to workplace expectations, rather than challenging systemic biases.¹⁰

III. Annalise Keating (How to Get Away with Murder) – Complexity and Representation

Unlike the optimistic Elle Woods, Annalise Keating, played by Viola Davis, is both a noble and flawed defense attorney and professor.¹¹ She is a more complex and nuanced female lawyer than traditional portrayals—she is intelligent and fearsome while also appearing vulnerable in equal measure.¹²

However, Annalise’s depiction also raises concerns. Media representations of Black female lawyers remain limited, and Annalise’s character draws on some harmful stereotypes, such as the “Angry Black Woman” trope​.¹³ This is significant because television influences real-world perceptions—when Black women attorneys are primarily depicted through such a lens, it may reinforce biases that hinder their advancement in the legal profession​.¹⁴

Despite these critiques, Annalise’s presence as a Black female lead in a major legal drama still pushed network television away from its traditional representation of minority characters which were previously seen as inferior, lazy, and untrustworthy.¹⁵ As the first Black woman to win a Primetime Emmy for “Leading Actress in a Drama Series,” Viola Davis made space for more diverse portrayals of female lawyers in the future​.¹⁶

IV. Jessica Pearson (Suits) – The Unapologetic Leader

Jessica Pearson, portrayed by Gina Torres in Suits, is a rare example of a female lawyer who broke the highest glass ceiling of the corporate legal world—she became the managing partner at her firm after leading a successful coup against the male name partners.¹⁷ Unlike many other on-screen female lawyers who struggle to balance personal and professional lives, Jessica is unapologetically tough, straight-talking, and domineering.¹⁸ Her character challenges the expectation that women must show vulnerability to be feminine—Pearson casts a powerful figure and is business-like, yet she shows elegance, grace, and self-assurance at the same time.¹⁹

However, as legal scholar Danielle Maddox Kinchen points out, television can sometimes present female lawyers as either extraordinary superhumans or emotional wrecks—leaving little space for the “average” female lawyer​.²⁰ While Jessica is an empowering figure, her whole life is the firm, which may set an unrealistic standard for real-life women in the law who aspire to embrace anything beyond their life at a powerhouse firm.²¹

V. Alicia Florrick (The Good Wife) – Power in Reinvention

Alicia Florrick, the lead character in The Good Wife, exemplifies the modern career woman’s struggle to navigate gender, the workplace, relationship status, and motherhood.²² Unlike Elle Woods or Jessica Pearson, Alicia forms her legal career later in life, returning to the law after leaving the profession to raise a family.²³ Her story reflects the reality that many women face—having to excel in an extraordinary way to be worthy of any acknowledgement.²⁴

Furthermore, like many other female lawyers on television, Alicia is held to unrealistically high standards.²⁵ A study of cinematic legal professionals found that female lawyers are typically depicted as having extraordinary skills, while male lawyers are given more room for error​.²⁶

VI. The Lasting Impact of Female Legal Characters

From Legally Blonde to How to Get Away with Murder, pop culture has profoundly influenced how society views women in the law. While some characters challenge stereotypes and inspire real-world change, others may reinforce unrealistic expectations or harmful biases. As media continues to evolve, there is a growing need for more nuanced portrayals of female lawyers. Rather than presenting them as either flawless superheroes or struggling underdogs, television and film should reflect the full spectrum of experiences that women in the legal profession face. By doing so, they can continue to shape legal history—not just in fiction, but in real life.

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* Lily Fredericks, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law Class of 2026 (Associate Editor)

1. Derek Blasberg, How Reese Witherspoon Is Changing Hollywood for Women, Wall St. J. Mag. (Nov. 1, 2017), https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-reese-witherspoon-is-changing-hollywood-for-women-1509548154 [https://perma.cc/9M5Y-EXYB]. ↩︎
2. Haley Moss, How ‘Legally Blonde’ Influenced a Generation of Women Lawyers, A.B.A. J. (Dec. 5, 2019), https://www.abajournal.com/voice/article/how-legally-blonde-influenced-a-generation-of-women-lawyers [https://perma.cc/YA2G-WGL7]. ↩︎
3. Tamsin Phillipa Paige, Catherine Butchart & Liam Merrifield, In a World of Warners, Be Like Elle: The Benefits of a Prosocial Community Focus to Being a Lawyer, 3 Legalities 5, 9 (2023). ↩︎
4. Id. at 6–7, 19. ↩︎
5. Anna M. Archer, From Legally Blonde to Miss Congeniality: The Femininity Conundrum, 13 Cardozo J.L. & Gender 1, 20 (2006). ↩︎
6. Id. at 12. ↩︎
7. Id. at 21. ↩︎
8. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e–2000e-17 (2022); Archer, supra note 6, at 8–11. ↩︎
9. Archer, supra note 6, at 8–11. ↩︎
10. Richard Lawson, Is How to Get Away With Murder the Most Progressive Show on Television?, Vanity Fair (Oct. 16, 2014), http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/10/how-to-get-away-with-murder-gay-sex [https://perma.cc/ABK5-TMGH]. ↩︎
11. Maxie Chopard & Keshara Hallock, Women Lawyers on TV: From Scarlet Pages to Suits, Obelisk Support Blog, https://obelisksupport.com/thinking/blog/women-lawyers-on-tv/ [https://perma.cc/NK3L-3C3Y]. ↩︎
12. Shamar Toms-Anthony, Annalise Keating’s Portrayal as a Black Attorney is the Real Scandal: Examining How the Use Stereotypical Depictions of Black Women Can Lead to the Formation of Implicit Biases, 27 Nat’l Black L.J. 59, 60, 71–72 (2018). ↩︎
13. Id. at 61. ↩︎
14. Toms-Anthony, supra note 13, at 65; David Atkin, An Analysis of Television Series with Minority-Lead Characters, 9 Critical Stud. Media Comm. 337–38 (1992). ↩︎
15. Toms-Anthony, supra note 13, at 65. ↩︎
16. Chopard & Hallock, supra note 12. ↩︎
17. Chopard & Hallock, supra note 12. ↩︎
18. Chopard & Hallock, supra note 12. ↩︎
19. Danielle Maddox Kinchen, Only the Best and Brightest: No Room for the Average Female Lawyer in the 21st-Century Cinematic Legal Profession, 21 Tex. Rev. Ent. & Sports L. 55, 55, 66 (2020). ↩︎
20. Chopard & Hallock, supra note 12. ↩︎
21. Chopard & Hallock, supra note 12. ↩︎
22. Chopard & Hallock, supra note 12. ↩︎
23. Kinchen, supra note 20, at 69. ↩︎
24. Kinchen, supra note 20, at 56. ↩︎
25. Kinchen, supra note 20, at 67–68. ↩︎