My Work House Assistant U.S.
Attorney For Northern District Of California
By Mrs. Annette Abbott Adams
The reader who expects to find a "story" in this article is due to disappointment unless, perhaps, he feels as I do, that the fact that the work which is given to me as assistant United States attorney does not differ from that of the men assistants in the department is sufficient.
In my opinion there is no particular reason why a woman lawyer' s work should differ from that of a man lawyer, whether engaged in the service of the government or in private practice; but the importance of which the public press has attached to my appointment as a federal prosecutor is evidence that in the mind of the public there persists a contrary opinion, and if it were otherwise I would probably not have been asked to write this article.
To be a "lawyer" without the distinction of being a "woman lawyer" is to be a "consummation devoutly to be wished"; and until the public shall have come to realize that success in any line of endeavor is depended upon the fitness of the individual, and is not a matter of sex, we women, whether in the professions or other fields of labor, shall not have truly arrived....
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mrs. Adams was appointed an assistant United States district attorney in September of 1914, and since that time has brilliantly conducted a number of prosecutions for the federal government.
From teaching in the public schools she graduated into the law, taking her degree of Juris Doctor at the University of California in 1912. She was submitted to the bar of California the same year, and practiced in Plumas County until June of 1913 when she established the law office in San Francisco with Miss Marguerite Ogden as a law partner.
Sources: California's Magazine, New Call Building, San Francisco, 1915, Excerpt Pages 409-411.
© 2002 Nancy Pratt Melton