COLUMBIA--Chief Justice Jean Toal has won a national award honoring her as a trailblazer for female lawyers.

Toal and four others will receive the American Bar Association's Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award in Atlanta on Sunday.

Women had just been allowed on juries about the time Toal graduated from the University of South Carolina Law School in 1968.

Toal practiced law for 20 years before being elected to the state Supreme Court in 1988. She became the state's first female chief justice in 2000.

Toal said she was honored to be included with other winners of the award, such as U.S. Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

"But more importantly, I rejoice in the statement this award makes for the status that women lawyers have achieved in this state," Toal said.

When Toal graduated from law school 36 years ago, women made up less than 1 percent of the lawyers in the state.

Currently, 28 percent of South Carolina's lawyers are women.