{"id":163342,"date":"2026-09-22T14:47:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T22:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/22\/before-there-was-a-public-defender-there-was-her\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:47:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T22:47:44","slug":"before-there-was-a-public-defender-there-was-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/22\/before-there-was-a-public-defender-there-was-her\/","title":{"rendered":"Before There Was A Public Defender, There Was Her"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span>Ed. Note:<\/span> Welcome to our daily feature <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/tag\/trivia-question-of-the-day\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Today, anyone accused of a crime who can\u2019t afford a lawyer is entitled to one at public expense. Who invented the concept of a public defender, a salaried government attorney to defend the poor built as a mirror image of the public prosecutor, first floated as a self-taught trial lawyer in an 1893 speech at the Chicago World\u2019s Fair? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: A downtown Los Angeles courthouse now bears her name, and she was also the first woman admitted to the bar on the West Coast.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/before-there-was-a-public-defender-there-was-her\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Before There Was A Public Defender, There Was Her<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-single__featured-image post-single__featured-image--medium alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/05\/public-defender-sign-300x300.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><figcaption class=\"post-single__featured-image-caption\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Photo via New Jersey Criminal Law Resource)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/tag\/trivia-question-of-the-day\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Today, anyone accused of a crime who can\u2019t afford a lawyer is entitled to one at public expense. Who invented the concept of a public defender, a salaried government attorney to defend the poor built as a mirror image of the public prosecutor, first floated as a self-taught trial lawyer in an 1893 speech at the Chicago World\u2019s Fair? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: A downtown Los Angeles courthouse now bears her name, and she was also the first woman admitted to the bar on the West Coast.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>1<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/before-there-was-a-public-defender-there-was-her\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/before-there-was-a-public-defender-there-was-her\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Today, anyone accused of a crime who can\u2019t afford a lawyer is entitled to one at public expense. Who invented the concept of a public defender, a salaried government attorney to defend the poor built as a mirror image of the public prosecutor, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}