Young Kuwaiti women have succeeded in becoming certified lawyers at a remarkable rate in the past decade. In the late 1980s, 20 women were registered as law students at the Faculty of Law at Kuwait University. In 1999, 120 women and 60 men were students. The latest available data for the academic year 2012/13 indicates 2,520 registered students of which 1520 are women and 990 are men. The upsurge of female lawyers in Kuwait impacts on societal pressures for reforms that bolster female citizenship in three ways: First, Kuwaiti women seek out female lawyers to a larger degree than male lawyers in order to get legal advice and/or raise a case in court, particularly in matters related to family law. This trend makes female lawyers more acquainted with the daily problems that women share compared with their male colleagues. Secondly, many female lawyers are observant Muslims who are confident enough to interpret religious law tenets, and argue for principles of justice within an Islamic jurisprudence framework in ways that challenge traditional interpretations and judicial practice. Finally, female lawyers have become active participants and leaders of different committees (such as the human rights committee) at the Kuwait Lawyers Association (KLA, est. 1963). They constitute potential agents of change in pushing for further reforms in gendered state laws, particularly pertaining to issues regarding family law (where the principle of male guardianship limits the autonomy of female citizens with regards to marriage, divorce and custody of children), nationality law (where Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis do not share equal civil rights as Kuwaiti men married to non-Kuwaitis), and housing law (where state law premises that only males can register as heads of households, Kuwaiti women are not entitled to register as heads of household, a practice that curbs and limits Kuwaiti women’s access to a range of social and economic rights, particularly in times of destitute if they divorce, get widowed, or experience financial hardship following marriage with non-Kuwaitis). Based on interviews with Kuwaiti female lawyers in the past three years, the paper argues that a young generation of female lawyers is breaking new grounds as professionals. Assertive female lawyers are also currently pushing for strengthened female autonomy within state laws, thereby challenging the patriarchal social order through their daily work as practitioners, and by way of mobilization through the KLA.