Hilda Maude Maddocks, the sixth woman to be admitted to the New South Wales Bar, was educated at Fort Street Girls' High School and the University of Sydney, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1939 and was a student in the Faculty of Economics. When war broke out, she became honorary treasurer of the Law School Comforts Fund. At the time of her admission to the New South Wales Bar on 26 May 1939, she was employed in the legal branch of the Department of Road Transport & Tramways where her father, Sydney Aubrey Maddocks, himself a law graduate of the University of Sydney and formerly on the list of non-practising barristers at the New South Wales Bar, had been commissioner. Five years later, having joined the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor's Office, she was admitted as a solicitor, on 26 May 1944. On 1 February 1962, Hilda Maude (now Catalano) was appointed legal officer, Crown Solicitor's Office, Department of the Attorney-General and of Justice; her designation was altered to solicitor on 1 September 1962. She retired on 7 August 1973.

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