FRENCH WOMAN LAWYER.
, OPINION ON DIVORCE. France’s first woman lawyer, Mme. Suzanne Grinberg, who was admitted to the Bar in 1010 and now specialises in divorce cases, in an interview with me the other day gave to . her husband all the credit of her career (states a writer in a London daily). “ I was very young,” she said, “ when I finished my law course, and was so self-conscious at being the only .woman in the profession that I am sure I never would have started practising if my husband hadn’t chided me. “ This sage husband said to me: * And why should being a woman keep you from being a lawyer! There will soon be other. women to keep you company in court.’ Of/ course, he was right. Now there are almost 1000 women lawyers in France.”
Few of the thousand, however, approach Mme. Grinberg in professional standing. She is the only woman member of the committee of the French Bar Association.
“I have had many criminal cases,” Mine. Grinberg recalled, "My first five murder cases were women who had killed their husbands. I got four of them off, but one received a sentence. My friends used to accuse me laughingly of believing in murdering husbands.” In speaking of divorces, she denied that there was any feeling in Paris over peo'ple from abroad getting overnight divorces. *We Parisians have a fine joke about our French justice, since foreigners come here for divorces,” she said.
Mme. -Grinberg has her own ideas about divorces. She said: “Women ask for divorces too easily, I think. There is no patience left in the world.
“ Girls come into my office and say to me: “My husband and I quarrelled last night. I want a divorce.’ I say, if they really want a divorce, I will take the case, but why not wait, try to be patient, adjust themselves a little, try to get along. There is far too little tolerance, far too little humour, far too little consideration .and patience in many modern marriages.” Mme. Grinberg’s career does not entirely consume her life. She and her husband and their 15-year-old son live a busy social life in Paris.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 20644, 16 February 1929, Page 7
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362FRENCH WOMAN LAWYER. Otago Daily Times, Issue 20644, 16 February 1929, Page 7
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