An accomplished human rights lawyer in Iran has been sentenced to 148 lashes and 38 years in prison over her work defending opposition activists and women’s rights to not wear hijabs in public.

Nasrin Sotoudeh was handed the maximum sentence for all seven charges against her, including spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

This isn’t the first time the 55-year-old has come under scrutiny for her human rights work in the Islamic republic.

Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been convicted and faces years in prison for her activist work and helping women. (AP/AAP)

She was also jailed for three years in 2010 for conspiring to harm state security.

In June the mother-of-two was re-arrested and tried in secret for the current charges against her.

According to Amnesty International, the nearly 40-year sentence against Ms Sotoudeh is the harshest documented against a human rights defender in Iran in recent times.

Mohammad Moghiseh, the judge presiding over Ms Sotoudeh’s case, applied the maximum statutory sentence for each of her seven charges with local media quoting his justification for the heavy sentence as being for “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security” and “insulting the supreme leader”.

Nasrin Sotoudeh and her husband Reza Khandan have two children. She was previously jailed in 2010 for her work in Iran. (EPA/AAP)

In Iran, it has been mandatory for women, including non-citizens and non-Muslims, to wear headscarves since the early ‘80s. Failure to do so can result in a jail sentence.