Ruby Kless Sondock enrolled at the University of Houston Law Center in the late 1950s planning only to become a legal secretary who could support her family if needed. She passed the Texas bar exam before she had even finished her degree. Sondock, who went on to become the first woman to serve on the Texas Supreme Court, died on July 21, 2026, in Houston at the age of 100.

She graduated from UH Law Center in 1962, one of only five women in her class, and finished as valedictorian, according to the University of Houston Law Center. The Houston trial lawyer Fred Parks hired her before she had even taken the bar and told her, "I don't care when you come and I don't care when you go," giving her the flexibility to build a practice while raising a family. Within her first year of practice, Sondock argued a case before the Texas Supreme Court, the institution she would later join from the bench.

Her judicial career began in 1973, when Governor Preston Smith appointed her to Harris County's Domestic Relations Court No. 5, making her the first woman named a full-time state district judge in the county. Four years later, in 1977, she became the first judge to sit on Harris County's newly created 234th District Court.

The defining appointment came in June 1982. After Associate Justice James G. Denton died in office, Governor William P. Clements named Sondock to complete his term on the Texas Supreme Court. She was sworn in on June 25, 1982, at age 56, becoming the first woman to sit on the court in a regular session since a one-case, all-woman special court convened in 1925, according to the Texas Judicial Branch. She served through the end of that year, then chose not to run for a full term and later turned down a further nomination to fill another vacancy on the court, returning instead to the 234th District Court, where Harris County voters reelected her without opposition that November. She later worked as a private mediator before retiring from the law.

Sondock's life outside the courtroom was anchored by her marriage to Melvin "Soupy" Sondock, her high school sweetheart. He flew as a fighter pilot in World War II and later ran Houston's Brook Mays Music Company; the two were married more than seventy years, until his death in 2014, according to the Jewish Herald-Voice.

Recognition followed her retirement from the bench. The State Bar of Texas litigation section inducted her as a "Texas Legal Legend" in 2015. In 2019, the Houston Bar Association created the Justice Ruby Kless Sondock Award for women lawyers and judges and named her its first recipient. Her law school established the Justice Ruby Kless Sondock Lectureship, bringing jurists to campus each year to speak on legal ethics. In April 2026, UH Law Center marked her 100th birthday with a public tribute to her career, just months before her death.

According to Houston Jewish Funerals, Sondock was survived by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

The 234th District Court, where she served as founding judge in 1977, still sits in Harris County. The Houston Bar Association still presents the award bearing her name each year to a woman lawyer or judge who has led in the field. And the law school she once entered planning to become a legal secretary still sends judges to lecture in her name, in the profession she helped open to the Texas women who came after her.