Prior to the 20th Century, there were few women in law in the United Kingdom. Prior to the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, women were not permitted to practice law in the United Kingdom.[1] By 1931 there were around 100 female solicitors.[1] The first female-only law partnership was founded in 1933.[2] By 2019 51% of British solicitors were women.[2]
Eliza Orme was the first woman in the United Kingdom to obtain a law degree, in 1888.[3][4] She was not called to the English Bar until later in the 1920s after the first female pioneers. In 1889, Letitia Alice Walkington became the first woman to graduate with a degree of Bachelor of Laws in Great Britain or Ireland.
In 1892, Cornelia Sorabji became the first woman to study law at Oxford University.[5] Dorothy Bonarjee became the first female to earn a law degree from the University College London in 1917.[6]
Barristers
The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 received Royal Assent on 23 December 1919.[2] The next day, Helena Normanton became the first woman to join an Inns of Court.[7]
In 1903, Bertha Cave applied to join Gray's Inn; the application was ultimately rejected.[8]
In 1913, the Law Society refused to allow women to take legal exams; this was challenged in the Court of Appeal in the case of Bebb v The Law Society, where the Law Society's stance was upheld.[1] The plaintiff in that case was Gwyneth Bebb, who was expected to be the first female to be called to the bar but died before that could happen.[9][10]
In 1922, Ivy Williams was the first woman called to the bar (although she never practiced),[11][12][13][14] and Helena Normanton became the first practising female barrister in the UK.[15][16][17] In September 2018 a barristers' chambers was renamed in her honour.[18] Williams was also the first woman to teach law at an English university,[11] whilst Normanton, along with Rose Heilbron, were the first two female barristers to be appointed King's Counsel, in 1949.[19] Heibron was also the first woman to achieve a first class honours degree in law at the University of Liverpool (in 1935), England's first woman judge as Recorder of Burnley (in 1956), the first woman to sit as a judge in the Old Bailey (in 1972), the second female High Court judge (in 1974), and the first woman Presiding Judge of any Circuit when she became Presiding Judge on the Northern Circuit (in 1978).[19]
Elizabeth Lane (1940) became the first female County Court judge (1962), and the first English High Court judge (1965).[20][21] Although not a barrister, Pauline Henriques became the United Kingdom's first Black female magistrate in 1966.[22] Patricia Scotland was the first Black female to become a Queen's Counsel in the United Kingdom in 1991,[23] and Linda Dobbs became the first Black (female) High Court judge in 2004.[24] In 2015, Bobbie Cheema-Grubb became the first Asian (female) High Court judge[25] whereas Kim Hollis became the first Asian female barrister to become Queen's Counsel in 2002 in the United Kingdom.[26]
In 2002, the Law Society appointed its first female President, Carolyn Kirby.[2] In 2021, Stephanie Boyce became the first Black female President of the Law Society.[24]
Baroness Hale became the first female Justice (2009) and President (2017) of the Supreme Court.[27][20][28] She was also the first female to become a Law Lord in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 2004. In 2022, Jessikah Inaba became the first Black visually-impaired (female) barrister in the United Kingdom.[29]
Solicitors
In 1920, Madge Easton Anderson became the first female solicitor in the United Kingdom upon being admitted to practice law in Scotland.[30][16]
In 1922, Carrie Morrison, Mary Pickup, Mary Sykes, and Maud Crofts became the first women in England to qualify as solicitors; Morrison was the first of them admitted as a solicitor.[1][31] Kathleen Hoahing became the first female to qualify as a solicitor in Britain in 1927, though she would relocate soon afterwards to China.[32][33][34]
In 2010, a report by The Lawyer found that 22 percent of partners at the UK's top 100 firms were women; a follow-up report in 2015 found that figure had not changed.[35] Since 2014, a number of large corporate firms of solicitors have set gender diversity targets to increase the percentage of women within their partnerships.[36][37][38]