Law Office Management
Aug. 2, 2011
Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz
by Barbara Allen Babcock. Also reviewed: Judicial Restraint in America by Evan Tsen Lee.
Few people recognize her name today. But in her time, Clara Foltz - who battled to become one of the nation's first female lawyers and who originated the public defender's office - lived and worked imbued with a Lady Gaga glow. She was a master manipulator of the media, known for her snappy tongue and eye-catching attire. Barbara Babcock, the author of Foltz's biography, is herself no stranger to firsts. She was the first woman appointed to Stanford Law School's faculty, and the first director of the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. Foltz, born in 1849 and a free thinker early on, eloped with a handsome soldier at age 15 and later divorced him when he philandered, repackaging herself as a penniless "widow" left with five children to support. Though Foltz was not described as a comely woman, she won over friends and foes alike with many attributes: She was intelligent, energetic, confident, funny, and an able and entertaining orator. When Foltz then decided to become a lawyer, it was considered an unnatural choice for a woman. There were fewer than 50 women lawyers in the nation, and none in California, where the profession was limited by law to white men. Foltz and a group of sister suffragists rectified that in 1878 by pushing passage of the Woman Lawyer's Act, which removed the ban. After reading for the bar and gaining experience at her father's law firm--the only one that would give her a chance--Foltz was sworn in as the first female lawyer on the Pacific Coast. Her joy was temporarily dimmed when another attorney called out from the back of the room: "Now, Mrs. Foltz, a woman can't keep a secret, and for that reason if no other I doubt if anybody will ever consult a woman lawyer." Some did, though. One of Foltz's first clients was a fellow passenger whom she charmed aboard a train. She tried to dissuade him from paying the $300 fee he offered (about $6,000 by today's standards), which was $700 less than another lawyer's price. Foltz won the case, along with copious amounts of free publicity, as San Francisco's 21 daily papers scrambled for news of the lady lawyer. But her first true star turn came the next year, in 1879, when she applied to Hastings Law School to learn more law. Hastings accepted Foltz's $10 admission fee but booted her out after three days, claiming her rustling skirts bothered the male scholars. She and Laura Gordon, another lawyer hopeful who later became Foltz's friend and occasional rival, joined forces and sued. They won, and the decision prompted an amendment to the state constitution guaranteeing women access to employment and education. Several of her male opponents attempted a double skewering when they faced Foltz in court--lambasting the clients she defended for their alleged crimes and her for taking on the unfeminine role of representing criminals. As her skin thickened, Foltz gave as snarky as she got, including, in one summation: "Counsel intimates with a curl on his lip that I am called the lady lawyer. I am sorry that I cannot return the compliment, but I cannot. I never heard anybody call him any kind of lawyer at all." Foltz's breakthroughs included being the first woman to serve as legislative counsel, serve as deputy district attorney, prosecute a murder case, and hold statewide office (on California's Normal School Board). Throughout her legal career, she forced great strides in prison reform and equal rights for women and the poor. She bravely relocated and reinvented herself through the years according to her whims and finances--as a crusading newspaper editor, real estate broker, and founder of gold and oil mining companies. But she always returned to California--and to the law. But Foltz was least successful at attaining the thing she wanted most: financial security. And by the final decades of her life, she had witnessed the deaths of four of her five children and seemed to become world-weary. When she died at 85--ironically, intestate--her worldly goods were listed as a library, professional scrapbooks, a cookstove, two sewing machines, 113 pieces of flatware, some oil paintings, and a tea set. Babcock's exposure of Foltz's warts makes her subject even more endearing. She bent the truth to suit her needs--in everything from whittling ten years off her age to that whopper about being a widow. And she was often ungenerous about sharing the podium or the limelight that she loved. The book is rich in history, and as entertaining and lively as its subject. And it's obviously meticulously researched. Babcock will admit now only that she started work on the book "well before there was Google," recalling dusty courtroom basements and library archives. Minor complaints: In a nod to the publisher's desire to keep down the page count and a bow to technology, the index and bibliographic notes appear only online--frustratingly out of reach to bibliophiles who want them in hand. And in a book this finely crafted, the final three chapters are an oddity. Each takes on an aspect of the subject's life--Foltz as "public thinker," as crusader for political equality, and as inventor of the public defender. Described in the introduction as thematic rather than chronological, they feel a bit tacked on rather than knitted in. Still, readers who are left wanting more may get that wish: Babcock's next project is to write her own memoir. Be on the lookout for Woman Lawyer II. Contributing writer Barbara Kate Repa is a lawyer and editor in San Francisco who frequently writes about women's issues.
Kari Santos
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