Around a year later, when Gardner separated from his partner and moved into suite 402 in the Turk's Head Building, he brought Ada along as his secretary.
When Ada started showing an interest in the law, Percy not only encouraged her to study it, but signed her up for the bar examination in 1917 as A. Sawyer.
After the Rhode Island Supreme Court debated this case, Justice Sweetland made the famous finding that the term "person" includes a woman, an important finding as women then still did not have full legal rights, such as the right to vote: "After consideration we are of the opinion that the word "person" contained in the rules regulating the admission of attorneys and counselors should be construed to include a woman as well as a man; and that the masculine pronoun "he" contained in the rules should be construed to include the feminine "she."
"We would therefore say in answer to the question of the board that 'it can permit a woman to take the examinations for admission to the bar, she complying with all the necessary qualifications and conditions applicable, under the rules of the court, to men.
Her dedication and hard work paid off, as she was the first woman in the state of Rhode Island to take and successfully complete the bar examination.
Once Ada Sawyer successfully completed the bar exam, she became a lawyer in the office of Percy Gardner in the Turks Head Building.
For women entering the law, Ada Sawyer was quoted as saying, "If a woman has an aptitude for this kind of work she has just as great opportunity to succeed as a lawyer as she would have in any other profession.
In 1955, the man who helped Sawyer enter the world of law, Percy Gardner, died, thus ending their partnership.
Sawyer was a member of the Wakefield Area Advisory Board of the Industrial National Bank, and a director of half a dozen other RI corporations.
In the Women's Republican Club, Sawyer drafted a bill for the appointment of a Code Commission to help reform the labor laws of the state with regard to minors.
In 2000, the annual Rhode Island Woman's Bar Association Award for Excellence was named in Ada Sawyer's honor.