“It is real fun to be a lawyer.”

Lavinia Goodell, August 21, 1874

The early days  of Lavinia Goodell’s legal practice were busy ones.  After being admitted to practice law on June 17, 1874, she was eager to get to work and was willing to take on any clients who wanted to hire her. Lavinia’s diary entries and letters make clear that she was throwing herself into her practice with great enthusiasm and she truly enjoyed being a lawyer.

In August 1874 she tried her first cases to the court after being retained by Jefferson County temperance women to prosecute saloon keepers dealers who violated the law by selling liquor on Sundays.  She won those cases. (Read more here.) She proudly wrote to her sister, “I am not afraid of the liquor men.  I only wish I had plenty of such cases and could win them all. . . . Run away from them and they will run after you, but give them chase and they will run the other way.”

The liquor men appealed, and in September she tried the cases to a jury, winning one and losing the other. (Read more here.) 

In addition, Lavinia continued to do copying work for her fellow attorney Pliny Norcross, and she handled a number of collections cases, including attempting to collect a debt owed by a butcher.  On August 14, she wrote in her diary that she had “called on him twice and studied up how to sue him.” Although the man promised to pay voluntarily, he did not follow through so the next day she “made him a final call and found him gone to supper; then the iron entered my soul and I went to Judge Prichard’s and got a summons and took to the sheriff to serve.” 

Two days  later she reported, “My butcher came around and paid up and promised me some collections.”  Lavinia shared her success with her sister, saying rather smugly that she “commenced a suit on a man for a debt which I couldn’t get out of him by milder measures.  He came around and paid up then, before trial. It is real fun to be a lawyer – and then you can sue and prosecute people, when they don’t behave!”

Sources consulted: Lavinia Goodell’s letter to Maria Frost August 21, 1874; Lavinia Goodell’s diaries.