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Soia Mentschikoff (1915–1984) was a distinguished legal scholar and educator whose career encompassed several “firsts” for women in the legal profession. Born in Russia, her father moved her family to New York in 1918. Mentschikoff would go on to graduate from Hunter College (1934) and Columbia Law School (1937). At Columbia, Mentschikoff met Karl Llewellyn, a professor of law and the Chief Reporter of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) for ALI. Initially, Mentschikoff worked with Llewellyn on the UCC as his research assistant, but she became the Associate Chief Reporter of the Code from 1949 through 1954. Subsequently, she became a consultant to the Permanent Editorial Board for the UCC.

In 1947, Mentschikoff joined the faculty at Harvard Law School, the first time a woman had taught at that school. Three years earlier in 1944, she had achieved another first by becoming the first woman partner at a major Wall Street firm. In 1951, Mentschikoff and Llewellyn, whom she had married in 1947, joined the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School. To satisfy the school’s anti-nepotism rule, Llewellyn was named a “professor” while Mentschikoff was a “professorial lecturer” until his death in 1962 when she became a professor. In 1974, Mentschikoff became the dean of the University of Miami School of Law, a position that she held until 1982.