[2] In 1874, she convinced a local attorney and civic leader Pliny Norcross to sponsor her application for the Rock County, Wisconsin, bar.

Goodell wrote to Lucy Stone and other female lawyers across the country to find previous judges who had allowed women to be admitted to the bar.

[1] Her first significant case was representing temperance women who wanted to sue two men for the illegal sale of liquor.

In May, she wrote a reply to the ruling which denied her admission and submitted it to Wisconsin newspapers, Myra Bradwell's Chicago Legal News, and the Woman's Journal.

[5] Then, on March 22, 1877, the Wisconsin legislature enacted a law which prohibited courts from denying admission to the bar on the basis of sex.

The bill had been drafted by Goodell and she worked with Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly John B. Cassoday for it to pass.

She drafted a bill for the Wisconsin legislature which would have granted married women whose husbands were unable to support them the right to petition the court to take possession of his property.

[1] She corresponded with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony through her life and helped to circulate petitions for a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote.

[2] She began a prison literacy program and wrote to her sister on New Years Day:I believe I could run that jail so as to turn out every man better than he came in.

Betty Diamond, a playwright and professor at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, wrote a 2013 play titled Lavinia about Goodell.