The year is 1883, and a recently disbarred lawyer is attempting to navigate some fierce chauvinistic headwinds. Lidia Poët is the first woman to ever practice law in Italy, before being told she can never do it again. Set in late-19th-century Turin, Poët’s story unpacks the fight for gender equality at a time when it didn't exist. Here’s everything you need to know about the series The Law According to Lidia Poët.
The series follows a suspended lawyer named Lidia Poët, who, along with her establishment brother Enrico and crew of like-minded malcontents, seeks to help the desperate and falsely accused who struggle for absolution in a rigid, patriarchal legal system. Each episode explores a new mystery and takes place in the baroque grandeur of 1880s Turin.
Yes, and Lidia Poët was, in real life, Italy's first ever woman attorney. Born in 1855 in the shadows of the Italian Alps, Poët charted a long and contentious path to recognition as a legal practitioner. Two years after graduating from the University of Turin’s law school in 1881, she was admitted — much to the shock of Turin’s all-male legal community — to Italy’s bar. Poët practiced law for three months before being disbarred at the instance of the monarchy's attorney general, who claimed that women had no place in a court room. That’s when her legal career ended, but a national discourse ensued, and finally, in 1920, at the age of 65, Poët was readmitted to the bar.
You can watch the series on Netflix starting Feb. 15.
Watch the trailer for The Law According to Lidia Poët below:
