Marin Women's Hall of Fame

Ann L. Diamond
By Nancy Nakai

    Just eight  years after  Ann Diamond arrived in the United States from her native Hungary,  she had  earned a  high school diploma, her college  degree, had graduated from law school and had passed the bar examination.   This  remarkable  achievement  was further enhanced by  the fact that at the time of her arrival in America, she could not speak any English. Ms. Diamond had always wanted to be  an  attorney.     "I  was  a  talkative child, always ready to argue. ...Someone must  have said,   'Ann should  be a  lawyer.'  I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was eight or nine years old."

     Anna Ladanyi  was born  in Hungary  in 1912.   She had a brother, Larry, four years older than herself.  Her  mother, Hella,  was a homemaker and  her father, Louis, was a government official.  When she was six, the Serbian Army occupied Hungary  and took hostages - including her father - for a time.  It was a  frightening period in her life, but it soon passed.   She characterizes her childhood as a happy one spent with friends and her favorite companion, her brother.  Yet, when an uncle who had moved to  the U.S. convinced her family to join him across the Atlantic, she "very much wanted to come."

     Ann had believed the stories that fortunes were made easily, that the streets  were "paved with gold".  When she arrived at the age of seventeen, however, America  had   just  plunged  into economic hardships of  the Great Depression.  She knew that to achieve her dreams she would have to get an education.  When she attended law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, she was one of only three  women  law  students  -  the  most  in the history of  the school.  She felt support from the other students and the faculty, however.       She worked during her years in college and  law school.   Yet, this extra demand on her time did not prevent her from graduating second highest in her 1937 class.  She was  also made a member of the honorary. Order of Coif.  This is not surprising since she had always been a good  student.   She passed the  Ohio bar examination in 1937, in a era when few women were lawyers.

    Difficulty in finding a position in a law  firm -  being met with "we  do  not  want  a  woman  lawyer in our firm" - was her first strong encounter with sexism.  And it forced her to find work at a legal publishing firm.  "It was a miserable job," she claims. She was soon  on her way to Washington, D.C. to seek a law job in one of the brand new New Deal agencies of the Roosevelt  administration. 

    On New  Year's Eve, 1945, Ann  met a  psychiatrist named Bernard Diamond,  a  behavioral  scientist  who  was  in  the  process of discharge from  the Army.   She married for a second time shortly thereafter.  Within the next few years, the Diamonds would have five children,  four girls  and one boy.  During this period, Ann became very interested in behavioral sciences  and the  impact of counseling.      She  decided  that,  when  she  returned  to law practice, she would specialize in family law.

    Her decision as to when to return to work in law was  tempered by the ages  of her  children.  She felt that it was important to be with them when they were very young.  Thus, it wasn't until 1954, when  her  youngest  child  was  in pre-school, that she began to practice law  and even  then it  was on  a part-time  basis.  Ann claims  that  the  greatest  gift  her  husband  gave her was the encouragement to resume her  career, even  though she  was in her mid-forties.   "I resumed  my career and let it grow naturally. I went full time when the kids were older."  She was supported by a family housekeeper  who could  back her up with the children when she couldn't be there.

     Ann found family law  very satisfying.   Eventually,  when one of her partners,  David Baty,  became a municipal court judge in the late 1960's, she and  her other  partner, Beverly  Savitt, formed their own law firm.  They hired another female attorney, and then another.  It became the first all-woman law  practice in  the Bay Area,  a  landmark.  

    An  article about the law firm appeared in Newsweek magazine as well  as  the  Chronicle  newspaper.   Their firm became successful.  Some men came to their firm because they felt that female attorneys would know "what was  wrong with their wives".    She  found  it  an  exciting time to practice law.  She liked setting a professional example for her children, especially the joy  of "doing  what you love for a living".  There were some obstacles to overcome.  While she found most of the  judges to be fair enough to female attorneys, some male lawyers were difficult.  Attorneys at times need to be tough; some of her male colleagues did not like toughness in a woman.  But she learned to take it in stride.

     During this period of time, Ann was active in developing a set of advisory  monetary guidelines for spousal support and child support.   Until that point, judges awarded support amounts on an arbitrary basis.  She led a committee  in the  local bar association that worked further on this issue.    Some  judges  in  the association took the guidelines  into  their  courts  and success followed. 

    Now the  guidelines are computerized and are mandated by law.  

    In 1962,  she wrote  an important  article for  the first family law book published by the Continuing Education of the Bar.  Ms. Diamond was selected to  serve  on  the  Family  Law Advisory Commission  of  the  State  Bar  of California,  in 1974, she was elected president of the Marin County Bar Association,  the first woman to serve in that office.  Ann also was elected as president of the Northern California Chapter  of  the  American  Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

    Ann  Diamond  was  also  one  of  a  group of people who actively addressed the issue of unequal access  to  the  law  -  that some persons could not afford legal services.  This group of attorneys volunteered  their  services  to  those  low-income  families who needed  their  help.    This  became the Legal Aid Society of the Marin County Bar  Association.    Later,  the  federal government stepped in  to provide legal service to the poor. Ann feels there is still  a strong  need for  attorneys to  volunteer their time, simply because what the government provides is inadequate and the legal aid system is terribly overburdened. 

    Ann was also one of the  first  local  attorneys  to  endorse and practice the concept of mediation.  Mediation, for her, served to reduce the  acrimony which  often resulted  from contested family law  matters.     She  also  trained other attorneys in the art of mediation.    "Mediation  is  wonderful,  but   it  takes  expert handling," she  states.   "You are  dealing with  people during a very difficult,  traumatic period  of their  lives. ...You have to have empathy." 

    When asked what changes she would like to see in family law, she quickly responded, "I would like to see mediation used more frequently."

     Ann taught  family law  at the  University of California at Davis from 1974 through 1981.  It was  a "practice  course" whereby law students could see what it was actually like to practice the law.  She set-up a free law clinic at the  school where  members of the university staff and its students could come for legal advise.

    After  forty-nine  years,  Ann  Diamond  retired  from active law practice in  1986.    For  thirty-two  of  those  years,  she had practiced in  Marin; in fact, she was one of the first practicing women attorneys in the county.   She was  considered an excellent attorney by  her peers.  She always demonstrated a willingness to serve as a mentor to other attorneys.  From her  law firm  came a number of  successful women  lawyers, including a judge (Superior Court Judge Beverly Savitt) and some  who now  run their  own law firms.  "I am pleased to have been able to help others," she said with a modest smile.

     When asked about the future of family law, Ms. Diamond  said that she  would  like  to  see  family  lawyers practice law less as a business and more as a profession.  Legal fees, she fears, eat up too many  assets.   She would  like to see the image of the legal profession improved through citizens  understanding  more  of the legal process,  perhaps through  civics classes given at the high school level.  She has great hope for family law and considers it a  wonderful  field,  especially  if an attorney is interested in people.  This echoes the enthusiasm she had for the  human side of family law when she first wrote her article in 1962:  "To practice  family law effectively, the lawyer must add to the traditional requirements of knowledge of the law, substantive and  procedural, an understanding of human behavior, including his [sic] own."

 Written 1990