Piecing Together Stories: The New York Legal Aid Society

Following the traditional narrative of the history of legal aid, I began to look at the archival sources from the Legal Aid Society of New York (NYLAS), long considered the earliest, largest, and most powerful legal aid society in the U.S.

²⁰ Balliet (2007).

²¹ Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 5 Feb. 1881.

²² Each state in the U.S. had its own rules or interpretation regarding whether women could be admitted to practise law in that state. For the most part the first generation of women lawyers had to sue or seek specific amendments from state legislatures in order to gain admission. There were a handful of women lawyers admitted to state bars in the very late 1860s and 1870s. By the mid-1890s, it became easier for women to be admitted to bars and law schools were more widely accepting women. Women lawyers, however, had a very difficult time finding employment and this continued to be the case through the 1960s. Women lawyers, some of whom held law degrees but did not practise law, played a large role in first- and second-wave feminism. On women in the legal profession, see Norgren (2013); Babcock (2011); Norgren (2007); Mossman (2006); Drachman (1993); Tani (2012); Jordan (2012); Eckhaus (1991). assistance? Who were its clients? The Legal Aid Society of New York, origi­nally named Der Deutsche Rechts-Schutz Verein, was established in 1876 by a group of elite German immigrants to help poor German immigrants with a host of issues including legal assistance. Several of the founders of this organisation were refugees from the German revolution of 1848 who had found success in the U.S.

Due to massive immigration into the U.S. at the turn of the century, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe, and the large number of poor immigrants who remained in New York City, many of the clients of the Legal Aid Society were immigrants.^[909] Leaders of the Society continu­ally argued that by providing legal aid to immigrants, it was essentially neutralising political radicalism, such as anarchy and socialism, that immi­grants brought from Europe.²⁶ Indeed, in other chapters of this book we see hints of a similar phenomenon—legal aid theoretically functioning as an agent of deradicalisation. The Society also imagined that legal aid and a respect for American law could Americanise immigrants. Through legal aid, clients would become “good, loyal, and enthusiastic citizens.”²⁷ Although these arguments were often used and became familiar tropes at fundraising events, there is no evidence that legal aid had such effects.²⁸ In fact, the Society and many lawyer-run providers of legal aid in the U.S.

The largest category of cases that the Society handled like the WWPU and other legal aid organisations both in the U.S. and in other countries were claims involving wages.²⁹ Indeed as I was to learn, wage claims, that of both men and women, transcended time and geography. This leads to a gaping and partially unanswered question of why this might have been the case. At least in urban areas in the U.S., it may have been the result of how manufactures subcontracted to smaller manufacturers who often went bankrupt. Moreover, the state had little enforcement power which could police employers paying wages. Likewise, unions, especially for low- waged workers and women remained weak or did not exist at all. Thus, these types of claims cannot be separated from the functioning of capital­ism itself or from the various states and federal government lacking strong

gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/progressive-era- to-new-era-1900-1929/immigrants-in-progressive-era, accessed 2 Mar 2021.

²⁶ German Legal Aid Society, Seventeenth Annual Report of the German Legal Aid Society (1893), p. 5. (Such reports are available at the New York Public Library).

²⁷ NYLAS, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report of the President, Treasurer, and Attorneys of the Legal Aid Society for the Year 1903 (New York: Thomas Publishing Company), New York Public Library (NYPL).

²⁸ Batlan (2015), p. 97.

²⁹ See, for example, NYLAS, Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the President, Treasurer, and Attorneys of the Legal Aid Society for the Year 1900 (New York: C. J. O'Brien, 1901), p.

regulations and enforcement mechanisms.^[910] It might also be an inherent element of unregulated capitalism.

Unlike the Working Women’s Protective Union, the Legal Aid Society claimed that it only employed professional attorneys. It condescendingly referred to the WWPU as its “lovely sister,” and pointed out that it did not have a full-time lawyer on staff.^[911] Yet the social and cultural distance between professional lawyers, and the types of cases and clients they wanted, often did not correspond to the problems of those seeking help from the society.^[912] Unlike the WWPU, which would take even the smallest cases on the ground that justice had to be pursued, the Society did not take cases unless there were potential damages of $5. Moreover, a client had to pay a small fee as well as a part of any judgement.^[913] Thus, free legal aid was not entirely free when professional lawyers were involved. The society had strict guidelines regarding which cases it would take and was often frustrated by clients bringing what they believed to be petty or weak cases to its office.^[914] Similar to the material relief that charities provided or withheld, the Society rationed the legal services that it dispensed to pre­vent the “vagrant giving of alimony or writs of habeas corpus or wage orders or divorces.”^[915] Likewise, at least some clients of the Society described the discourteous manner in which they were spoken to and soci­ety lawyers attempted to keep interviews to ten minutes.^[916]

In the papers of the New York Legal Aid Society, I soon found that Rosalie Loew, a Jewish woman, in 1895 became one of the first women graduates of NYU law school and became licensed to practise law in New York State. Loew, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, was prob­ably hired in part for her fluency in multiple languages, which was especially crucial as so many of the clients of legal aid were immigrants who did not speak English.

It is possible that Rosalie Loew knew of Emily Kempin who had been very active in the establishment of women’s legal centres in Germany as discussed in Hiroki Kawamura’s chapter in this book.^[920] Kempin had relo­cated to the U.S. for a period and was teaching a non-credit class affiliated with NYU law school to women approximately three years before Loew attended NYU. Perhaps Kempin was even an inspiration for the New York Legal Aid Society to open its women’s branch. In fact, in 1909, a small article appeared stating that Kempin had given a lecture at the New York Legal Aid Society and it credited her with creating women’s legal aid cen­tres in Germany.^[921] Yet, I was never able to find a direct connection between women’s legal aid centres in Germany influencing women’s legal aid in the U.S. or perhaps vice versa. But clearly, the idea of poor women needing legal aid which would be provided by other women was a cross­Atlantic idea.^[922]

With this research, I wrote an article, claiming that at least in New York, at the turn-off the century, at a time when there were few professional women lawyers, the provision of legal aid was feminised.^[923] Yet, as I contin­ued my research, as we shall see, it became clear that the heyday of women at the New York Legal Aid Society was at the turn of the century, and soon the Legal Aid Society of New York would cease to hire women for decades to come. This, however, only became apparent with a great deal more research. Likewise, when Loew left the NYLAS she supposedly did so to raise her family, but my sense is that there were deeper problems sur­rounding her departure, but I never found the documents that I needed to fully articulate this argument.