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Miss Miller, a distinguished woman lawyer of Chicago, is a farmer's daughter, and was born on a Michigan farm, in Calhoun County, December 28, 1864. Her early education was obtained in a country district school. She afterwards attended the Marshall High School, and graduated in the Latin course. She then attended the Michigan State Normal School located at Ypsilanti, from which she graduated in 1886. The following year she taught school at Portland, Michigan. The next summer she entered the office of the county clerk, of Calhoun County, and there learned to use the typewriter. In the winter of 1888, Miss Miller went to Chicago, and entered a shorthand school, and in the following autumn took a position as stenographer and typewriter with A. C. McClurg & Co., publishers, remaining with them until the following spring. She followed the occupation of a stenographer until 1894, occupying places during that period in the offices of some of the most prominent lawyers in the city of Chicago.

Miss Miller began the study of law about the 1st of October, 1893, attending the Chicago College of Law, from which college she received her diploma in June, 1896, being admitted to the bar at that date. She afterwards took a post-graduate course in law, and received the degree of B.L., from the Lake Forest University. She commenced the practice of law about the 1st of July, 1895, and opened her office in Chicago.

It is something to have earned a $30,000 fee, but what Miss Mary E. Miller has done for the poor is of far more importance to the public. Miss Miller, who has been practising law in the Chicago courts for thirteen years, received her largest fee for winning a suit in behalf of the heirs of a millionaire and secured a court order for the immediate distribution of $3,000,000. It was a triumph that attracted attention to her, but what she considers her real success at the bar was in a suit in which she received no fee whatever. Miss Miller possesses a high sense of eternal justice of right, and when she discovered that the Illinois courts had deprived the poor of their rights 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," 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, 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 eleven 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, was set aside and a second trial called.