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Show WOMAN LAWYER'S FINE FEE. One Case Said to Have Brought Mia Mary Miller of Chicago $30,000. Chicago. It is something to have earned a $30,000 fee, but what Mian Mary E. Miller, a Chicago lawyer, ha clone for the poor is of far more iufc-portance iufc-portance to the public. Miss Miller, who has been practicing law in th courts of this city for 13 years, received re-ceived her largest fee for winning a suit in behalf of the heirs of a millionaire million-aire and secured a court order for the immediate distribution of $3, 000,000. It was a triumph that attracted attention atten-tion to her, but what she considers her real sriiccess at the bar was in a suit in which she received no fee whatever. Miss Miller possesses a high sense ot eternal justice of rigtit, and when she discovered that the Illinois courts had deprived the poor of their right of "a day In court," she forthwith took up the cause of the pauper and fought to restore to him equal rights before the law with the rich. The case which brought her into the white light-was a petition for mandamus, compelling the judge to examine the relator and certain documents presented by her, and to determine whether she could sue as a poor person under the Illinois statutes. The judges of the superior court had enacted a rule regulating suits brought under the statute as poor persons, whom the rule styled "paupers," "pau-pers," which was so burdensome and oppressive both to the lawyer and the client that it was naturally impossible to comply with it conscientiously. The rule worked to the benefit of the corporations, cor-porations, traction companies and others against whom personal injury suits were brought, as it deprived many of the opportunity of going into court. Miss Miller won her case for the "poor person," and the supreme court held the unjust rule null and void, overruling the law enacted by the 11 judges of the superior court Miss Miller thereupon brought suit for her client, a "poor person," and won damages of $1,000, the verdict, however, being set aside and a second trial called. Miss Miller's fee in thl ease was less than nothing, her client being a poor negress, born a slave, but the suit established the right of so-styled so-styled "poor persons" to fight In court for their right against the rich. "It restored," said Miss Miller, "the right of the poor to sue, a right of which, the court had shamelessly deprived them." Miss Miller is a farmer's daughter and was born on a Michigan farm, in Calhoun county. Possessing a hunger for education, she attended the district dis-trict school, the high school, the Ypsi-lanti Ypsi-lanti Normal school, a well-known business college, and the Chicago College Col-lege of Law, receiving a degree from the latter. To defray her expenses she taught school and later became a stenographer in order to attend night school in Chicago and study law, being admitted to the Illinois bar in 1895. There is hardly any branch of law that this enterprising young woman has not undertaken. Miss Miller is prominent promi-nent in the woman suffrage movement Her success is hound to give encouragement encour-agement to her sex who are contemplating contem-plating the law as a profession. |