When Ruth Lavine LLB 1943 was attending the University of Southern California Law School, male and female students had separate gathering places. Between classes, the men would play cards in one room while the women, for whom such an activity was deemed unbefitting, congregated in a different location downstairs.
"Nobody would stand for that nowadays," Lavine says with a laugh.
To hear Lavine talk about being a woman in law school and in the legal profession is to enter a strange world. Her stories show that an anti-female bias existed; but they also testify to a sensibility toward gender discrimination that was different from that of most women today. Above all, they reveal that Lavine focuses not on what divides people but on commonalities and connections.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, Ruth Jacobson Lavine is an immigrant to the United States. Her father, who had read Mein Kampf, understood early on that Jewish families like his own would not be safe if Hitler were to assume power. The Jacobsons left Germany for Holland and England on April 1, 1933, two months after Hitler had become chancellor. They moved on to Los Angeles in 1938. Ruth, like her sister one year after her, attended USC as an undergraduate and for law school.
Lavine's class consisted of only about two dozen students; five of them were female. Compared with the years immediately after World War II when women made up about three percent of law students countrywide that was a lot — and for a simple reason: In 1940, when Lavine matriculated, many men had already been called to military duty.
Lavine has many fond memories of her time at the USC Law School. But the one she holds most dear is meeting her husband, Richard Lavine LLB 1942, after she had been there only a few months. Also Jewish and very much interested in world politics, he one day introduced himself to Ruth. "We talked about Europe and the war," she says, "and then we started dating."
Ruth and Richard Lavine were married in 1944; the year after she had passed the California bar exam. When she began exploring the job market — Richard was serving in India and China — Lavine met resistance. The men interviewing her assumed that she would start a family after her husband's return and stay home with the children.
"They weren't interested in anyone who was going to do that," Lavine says, again with a laugh and without betraying any form of resentment. "And in the district attorney's office they certainly didn't want to hire anybody like that."
For the next 15 years, Lavine practiced law part time while, indeed, raising two children. When she started working full time, it was because a USC Law School connection, Robert Thompson LLB 1942, asked her to work for his firm in L.A. Lavine later practiced in Beverly Hills with her husband and Harry Fain LLB 1946 and eventually she became a solo practitioner.
As a probate and estate planning attorney, Lavine thrived on the personal connections with her clientele. "I liked actually being able to help people," she says. Many of her clients were immigrants from Europe, many of whom spoke German as well.
Her heritage remains central in Lavine's life — as does her connection with the law school. After her husband's death in 1994, she established a scholarship in his memory that helps students at USC Gould pay for their education. "I always get a very nice letter from the recipients," she says. "They always sound like [the scholarship] was meaningful in their lives, and that makes me happy."
Lavine retired from private practice in 1990. She is still a trustee for some testamentary trusts, and she is the treasurer for an organization that connects German Jewish refugees in L.A., The Benefactors of the Jewish Club of 1933. She continues to pay her bar dues and keeps up with the continued education requirements. "I enjoy going to these [CLE] events," she says. "There are no exams. I just have to show up and listen to the lecture while eating lunch. What's so bad about that?"
