1857-1938
Defense Attorney

A Famous Trial Lawyer.

Clarence Darrow represented more than fifty people charged with first-degree murder, and only one of these clients, his first, was executed. His defense of radical union leaders such as Eugene V. Debs and William "Big Bill" Haywood and antiwar activists during World War I earned him a reputation as a champion of labor and the rights of individuals before he gained worldwide renown as a defense lawyer during the 1920s.

Background.

Born in Ohio, Clarence Darrow was admitted to the bar in 1878 and spent all his lengthy legal career in Chicago, Illinois. By 1898 he belonged to a busy law firm that included a former Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld. Darrow's first successes came in civil cases, in which he usually represented major corporate clients such as the Chicago 8c North Western Railway. In 1894 he took his first...