Shirah Neiman, Pathbreaking New York City Prosecutor, Dies at 81
[excerpt]Shirah Neiman, Pathbreaking New York City Prosecutor, Dies at 81
In 1970 she broke an unwritten rule against women lawyers in the Southern District’s criminal division. She went on to mentor a long list of prominent lawyers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Shirah Neiman in 1970. Before she was hired in the Southern District of New York, all 50 lawyers in the criminal division were men. Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
By Clay Risen
Published Jan. 16, 2025
Updated Jan. 17, 2025
Shirah Neiman, a bookish Brooklynite who in 1970 cracked open the boys’ club that was the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, becoming the first woman in decades to be hired into its criminal division, died on Jan. 4 in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She was 81.
Her sister and only immediate survivor, Dassi Gurfein, said that the cause of death, at a nursing facility, had not yet been determined, but that she had recently been diagnosed with multiple tumors.
The daughter of an intellectually minded Orthodox Jewish couple — her father taught Hebrew literature, her mother was a concert pianist — Ms. Neiman first applied for a job with the Southern District in 1969. Of the 50 lawyers in the criminal division at the time, not one was a woman.
“I was advised by Peter Fleming, the administrative assistant then, that I probably wouldn’t be hired, but that I ought to try to force the issue,” she told The New York Times in 1970.
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Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk. More about Clay Risen
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 18, 2025, Section B, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Shirah Neiman, 81, Lawyer Who Cracked Glass Ceiling In the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe