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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowEach year, the IndyBar Women and the Law Division presents the Antoinette Dakin Leach Award to recognize the accomplishments of a female attorney in central Indiana. The award is named in honor of Antoinette Dakin Leach, one of the first women admitted to the Indiana Bar.
The spirit of Antoinette Dakin Leach lives on through each award winner and this year’s recipient, Marcia Oddi, founder of the Indiana Law Blog is no exception. Oddi has forged a career from numerous groundbreaking accomplishments.
OddiOf those groundbreaking accomplishments, she created and founded the Indiana Law Blog in 2003. During this point in history, a blog was a unique and transcendent career choice—one that set Oddi a part from her counterparts.
Before the creation of the Indiana Law Blog, Oddi directed the project that led to the codification in 1971 of all of Indiana’s statutes into the Indiana Code; she served as Indiana’s first Revisor of Statutes and as Director of the Public Law Division of the Indiana Legislative Services Agency.
The Indiana Law Blog, as described by Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Professor Joel Schumm, was “an extraordinary service to the bar, bench, press and public.” According to the Indianapolis Star, the website “averaged 4,000 hits daily and was an abundant repository of legal and political news in Indianapolis and beyond. It’s a one-stop resource that provides lawyers, judges, politicians, journalists and laypeople fingertip access to the most recent court orders, opinions, case summaries, hearing schedule, analysis and commentary posted in a timely manner.”
In addition to these accomplishments, she also is a woman with cool intellect and sound judgement. Professor Schumm speaks to Oddi’s decisiveness: “She elevated the debate and understanding of a lot of different issues, she’s able to do that with a level of sophistication that you don’t find anywhere else. She understands what issues are important and why they’re important.”
Oddi will be honored at the annual Antoinette Dakin Leach Award Luncheon, to be held at the Skyline Club in downtown Indianapolis on Wednesday, Nov. 29. Registration is available online at indybar.org/events.•
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