Shattering the Glass Ceiling: Marin County Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Kristine Fowler Cirby

MCBA’s Lifetime Achievement Award honors community titans with long, distinguished legal and public service careers who have left indelible marks on Marin County and our Bar Association. MCBA is proud to announce that it will bestow this award for only the fourth time in its 90-year history to Judge Verna Adams (Ret.), on July 17, 2024 at a dinner in her honor at the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross, CA.  Judge Adams is the first woman to receive this coveted award. 

For those of you who do not know Judge Adams, she has been a force to be reckoned with from a young age.  She grew up in South Bend, Indiana, a town of about 100,000 people, 100 miles from Chicago. She remains close to many of her childhood friends, some of whom will attend the July 17, 2024 event. 

 

Because her parents came of age during the Great Depression, her mother was not able to graduate from high school, and her father could not finish college. They made sure that their five children (Judge Adams is the youngest) would have opportunities that they did not have.  At an early age, she decided she wanted to be an attorney.  

She was valedictorian of her high school class (in 1963) and gained admission to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, graduating summa cum laude in 1967.  She enrolled at Columbia Law School for her first year and then transferred to Stanford Law School, graduating in 1970. She went from the all-women Wellesley to a law school class in which she was only one of three women.  

While in law school Judge Adams interned at the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office and also spent time at California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) in Delano, California. CRLA was the legal branch of the California Farm Workers’ Union, then led by Cesar Chavez. She was able to meet Mr. Chavez and while she would have loved to join CRLA, they had little money and no openings for totally inexperienced attorneys. 

 

During a brief period working at a boutique San Francisco law firm, Judge Adams read an article in the women’s section of the San Francisco Chronicle about a female law firm in San Rafael. After she sent them a letter and her resume, Beverly Savitt invited her to come to San Rafael for lunch. She met with Beverly and her partner Ann Diamond (the first and second female MCBA Presidents), and accepted their job offer as an associate.  

 

Judge Adams moved to Marin soon after and threw herself into the practice of family law and community service.  Judge Adams always had a few pro bono cases going and she volunteered at Legal Aid of Marin. She served on the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood and the Center for the Family in Transition. In 1986 Judge Adams and several other attorneys got together and formed what is now the Family and Children’s Law Center, which furnishes low-cost legal services to individuals involved in family law matters, including domestic violence. She served on their board of directors for years. Serving on the Board, she became increasingly aware of the growing number of self-represented litigants in family law and their special needs. 

 

Judge Adams served as President of the Marin County Bar Association as its third woman president, following Ann Diamond and Beverly Savitt. She was also honored by her peers, who listed her in “The Best Lawyers in America” for many years before her judicial appointment.  

 

Judge Adams became a partner in the Diamond and Savitt firm and later worked with Beverly Savitt until Judge Savitt’s appointment to the Marin County Superior Court in 1982.  Thereafter she was in partnership with Barbara Dornan until shortly before she was sworn in as a Judge of the Marin County Superior Court in 1999, having been appointed by Governor Gray Davis. 

 

During her 24+ years of judicial service, Judge Adams served in every division of the court—criminal, civil, family law, juvenile, and probate. She was elected by her colleagues to serve as Presiding Judge and she was selected by the Chief Justice of California as one of nineteen judges (there were about 1,650 statewide at the time) to serve on the Strategic Evaluation Committee, charged with making recommendations to streamline and improve court administration in California. 

 

Once she became a judge, she began to understand the needs of self-represented litigants from a different and enlarged perspective. She formed the task force which created the Legal Self-Help Center of Marin, a place where those without attorneys could obtain assistance with filling out legal forms, get tips on court presentation and protocol, and obtain general legal information. It has met an enormous and growing need in our county. She served as President of its Board of Directors for several years after the Center opened. 

 

When Judge Adams joined the court, Marin had only one specialty court, an adult drug court. She saw the need for other specialty courts that could address the needs of our most underserved populations in Marin. She formed and served as the first judge presiding over the Mental Health Court and the Domestic Violence Court. 

 

Family law has always been her specialty. As supervising judge in the Marin Unified Family Law Court, she became even more aware of the needs of self-represented litigants in all aspects of family law, especially domestic violence and child custody. She presided over a special court session for self-represented litigants where the court furnished the assistance of volunteer attorneys and paralegals to help these litigants resolve issues and fill out paperwork. Frequently those self-represented litigants would leave the court session with a signed judgment on file.  Judge Adams also initiated a settlement conference program for parties involved in high-conflict custody disputes, creating a panel comprised of a judge, a family law attorney mediator, and a mental health professional to help parties work out a custody plan that was in their children’s best interest. Never satisfied, in collaboration with Judge Beverly Wood (Ret.) and the family law bar, she also addressed problems related to visitation, by creating a visitation supervisors’ training program whereby qualified individuals could receive required training for free, in exchange for furnishing hours of free supervision for families in crisis.  

 

Throughout her distinguished career, Judge Adams’ enduring passion has been to make our justice system accessible to the most disenfranchised members of our community: children, women, victims of domestic violence and all who must navigate the legal system without an attorney.  

After the Lifetime Achievement Award event had been scheduled, Judge Adams lost her husband and love of her life, John Boudett, who died peacefully at home on April 17, 2024. John was adamant that the event go forward without delay and Judge Adams is honoring his wishes. 

Please join us in honoring Judge Adams when she receives the Marin County Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award on Wednesday, July 17, 2024, at the Marin Art & Garden Center in Ross, California.  Sponsorships and tickets are available here.