Clement took a job as an office deputy in the Buncombe County sheriff's department at the age of 14 and studied law with James Jefferson Britt and Robert G. Goldstein in her spare time.

Zoe Rhine, special collections librarian at Pack Memorial Library, contends that "Close research of the federal census records, the Asheville City Directories, the All Souls' Parish Yearbook and early newspaper articles leads this writer to believe that Exum [as she is often referred to] changed her birth year from 1886 to 1894.

Given the times, as well as her public life at the time, she may have believed that there would have been a negative reaction to her marriage to a man nine years younger than herself….”[7][8] NC state archivist Fran Tracy-Wells also speculates that "It is possible that Exum listed her age on her marriage certificate as some eight years younger in order to be closer in age to her husband, born around 1894.

Although ahead of her time, Exum was traditional in some ways and possibly feared the scorn of those who disapproved of a woman marrying a man some years her junior.

[10] In 1920, Clement was nominated as a candidate by the Buncombe County Democrats and was elected to the General Assembly of 1921's House of Representatives by an all-male electorate by the overwhelming margin of 10,368 to 41.

First, a bill that was considered controversial at the time appropriated state funds for the Lindley Home for Unwed Mothers.

Clement served one term and was then appointed by the governor of North Carolina to be director of the State Hospital at Morganton.