Connie Howes picked up golf as a young lawyer — not for the love of it, but as a strategy to help generate clients in a profession dominated by men.

"So I played golf poorly," Howes said in a recent interview reflecting on her legal career. Howes, of Providence, is one of 176 women being honored as trailblazers in the legal profession by Roger Williams University School of Law.

Howes was the third woman to join the Providence firm Tillinghast, Collins & Graham not long after she graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1978. Over the ensuing years, two other female associates added to the ranks.

"We had a substantial minority, I guess you would say," she said.