A new video has been released as part of the First 100 Years Initiative that celebrates the history of women in the law.
Supported by Gilbert + Tobin and the Law Society of NSW, the video offers a variety of perspectives from lawyers and law students about women in the law.
BY JANE SOUTHWARD
A new initiative is bringing together lawyers to celebrate how far women have come in the legal profession since the Women’s Legal Status Act was passed in November 1918, allowing women to practise as lawyers in NSW.
Rachel Scanlon, a lawyer who works in financial services, is leading the First 100 Years project, with the support of the Law Society of NSW and the Women Lawyers’ Association of NSW.
The first woman to serve as the Chief Justice of the High Court, Susan Kiefel, has signed on as Patron of the First 100 years project. Included on the First 100 Years Steering Committee are Amber Cerny, Catherine James, Ilana Orlievsky and Lucinda Bradshaw.
Among the commemoration plans for 2018 is a scholarship for a woman lawyer, the commissioning of a portrait of Chief Justice Kiefel, and a photo mosaic digital artwork of Ada Evans, the first Australian woman to graduate with a law degree.
“Women’s contribution to the legal profession is definitely worth celebrating,” says Scanlon, who studied law at UNSW, has worked at Clayton Utz, Goldman Sachs and Magellan Financial Group, and now is consulting with Peerpoint by Allen & Overy.
“One hundred years on, women represent more than half the legal profession yet we don’t have enough perspective on how far we have come and the hard work that happened to allow women to practise. And, there is so much further to go in regards to pay equality and career progression.”
The First 100 Years project began in the United Kingdom where they will mark the centenary of their first female lawyer in 2019. Other countries are considering similar projects to document the history of women in law.
Scanlon and the team behind the First 100 Years in Australia are seeking financial support from firms, big and small, for numerous projects.
For the photo mosaic digital artwork, hundreds of women lawyers will be invited to submit a photograph of themselves to make a digital image of Ada Evans.
Plans also are underway for a gala event in late 2018 to mark the 100th anniversary of the passing of the law allowing women to practise as lawyers.
Mary Gaudron made a huge breakthrough in February 1987 when she became the first woman appointed to the High Court of Australia.
Gaudron forced one immediate change: those before the court were instructed to change their method of addressing High
Court justices from “The Honourable Mr Justice X” to “The Honourable Justice X”.
By 1991, the proportion of women solicitors in NSW had grown to 23.5 per cent. More than half the graduates enrolling in the College of Law were women.
The number of women partners at law firms had grown to 7 per cent from 3.9 per cent in 1984. There were more in private practice at employee level (up 39.5 per cent), in government (up 39 per cent) and in corporate practice (up 31 per cent). Women studying law had grown from 30 per cent in the mid-1970s to 50 per cent in the mid-1980s and enrolments at some of the state’s law schools hit 65 per cent in 1991.
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce
It fell upon Marie Beuzeville Byles to be the first woman to be admitted as a legal practitioner in NSW. Byles’ mother had been a suffragette who impressed upon her daughter the need to be financially independent of men.
Byles was head prefect and dux of Pymble Ladies College in 1917. She obtained her arts degree in 1921and her law degree in 1924, but had trouble getting a job until the Dean of Law at Sydney University, Sir John Peden, persuaded Henry Davis & Co to give her an opportunity.
Henry Davis & Co
Byles had to pay double the usual £100 premium to her master solicitor during her training and the articles of her clerkship stated that her father should “provide all manner of necessary and becoming apparel”.
The following year, 1925, Byles became the first woman to attend an AGM of the Incorporated Law Institute of NSW. She became managing clerk at Henry Davis & Co and stayed with the firm until 1927.
She then travelled for two years on a Norwegian cargo boat (a journey she wrote about in By Cargo Boat and Mountain, published in 1931), before returning to Sydney in 1929 and establishing her own practice at Eastwood. The work was mainly conveyancing and probate – and divorce settlements for women.
Byles became the first female master solicitor when Margaret Crawley was articled to her after the war. She gave many other women their first steps in the legal profession, and preferred to employ married women.
Permanent part-time work
Well ahead of her time, she introduced a system of permanent part-time employment for her staff, who were also paid bonuses based on annual profit.
She was the legal correspondent for Australian Woman’s Mirror (1927-36), advising women on their rights. In one column, titled “Who owns the housekeeping?” she counselled women to “spend all you can” as there was no reward for frugality when it came to money that was deemed by the law as held in trust to spend for their husbands.
She attended her second Institute AGM in 1936 alongside Lillian Goldsmith – the first woman to complete the Solicitors Admission Board course (in 1933).
Although Byles continued to practise until 1970, the last time she appears in the list of attendees at an AGM of the Institute was in 1950. By that time, she had other well-established interests, including as a member of the Sydney Bushwalkers Club successfully campaigning for the creation of Bouddi National Park on the NSW central coast in 1935; as an explorer climbing New Zealand’s Mt Cook and leading an expedition to Mt Sansato in western China; and as a founding member of the Buddhist Society of NSW.
Byles’ “break” with the professional body signalled the start of a period of disengagement by women lawyers.
For more on Marie Byles, read Anne McLeod’s biography, The Summit of her Ambition.
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce
Mahla Pearlman followed Anne Plotke on to the Law Society Council in 1976.
Pearlman became the Law Society of NSW’s first female president in 1981. She would establish a number of other
firsts: first female representative of the Solicitors Admission Board, first female President of the Law Council of Australia (1989) and first female head of a NSW court when she was appointed President of the Land and Environment Court in 1992.
Raised eyebrows
She delighted in recounting how an unnamed barrister had sent her a copy of the Evidence Act, reflecting a long-standing joke at the Bar that solicitors did not know anything about evidence.
When she handed over the reins of the Society to Don McLachlan a year later, he told members:
“It would not surprise me to learn that 12 months ago a number of the members of this Society raised their eyebrows when they first learned that a woman president had been elected. However, there was no member of this Council who did that, because each member knew a good solicitor when he saw one.
“Mahla, I know it is one of your beliefs about solicitors that it does not matter whether you are a woman or a man, the important thing is that you should be a good, competent solicitor …you are a most competent solicitor and you have been a most competent president.”
Family or career
Pearlman, who died in 2011 aged 74, had known things would be easier for those who followed – most importantly, that they would not feel they had to choose between career and family.
“I don’t think I could have had my career over these 30 years if I had married,” she said. “You could do it now, though.”
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce
Jean Hill (admitted 1943) was one of three daughters and she would often joke that had there been a son, she would not have studied law and might instead have become a poet. She joined Hill Thomson and Sullivan, the firm her father Arthur founded in 1910, and went on to be partner.
Pike Verekers Law
The firm later merged with Pike Pike and Fenwick, which today is Pike Verekers Law.
Some of the barriers were weakened during the war years. Articles were easier to obtain due to the number of prospective lawyers on active duty, and by the end of the decade another 32 women had been added to the roll of practitioners.
The women started to meet informally, first in late 1941 in Pike’s home, then at the Feminist Club in King Street. They turned up to the Incorporated Law Institute of NSW’s Institute’s AGMs – Marie Byles, Veronica Pike and Jean Hill were to become regulars – and they were no mere spectators.
Marie Byles rates several mentions in the minutes, suggesting a public information brochure regarding solicitors’ bills of costs and requesting monthly general meetings on more than one occasion. Neither was acted upon by the Council, but Byles was not the only member to be rebuffed on the question of more regular meetings.
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce
Veronica Pike had started her career as an articled clerk when her brother, Vincent, was admitted as a solicitor in 1929. She hadn’t completed her studies at the Solicitors Admission Board when her brother’s illness forced her to run the practice herself under the supervision of the prothonotary.
Regular court appearances
When she was admitted as a solicitor in 1940, she went into partnership with her well-again brother.
Pike was unusual among early women lawyers in that she appeared in court regularly as an advocate. She was renowned for her work on landlord-tenant disputes and workplace law.
Hers was not an unusual path for early women lawyers – for many it was the family firm that allowed them to practise.
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce
After Marie Byles, only nine other women had been admitted to practise as solicitors in NSW, and four of them practised for a short period or not at all.
Another two had been admitted earlier in Victoria.
Christian Jollie Smith was admitted in 1912 and set up practice as a solicitor in Little Collins Street from 1914.
Victoria’s first woman taxi driver
A passionate socialist, she was active in the anti-conscription campaigns of World War I, taught evening classes at the Victorian Labor College and then English literature at Melbourne High and Brighton Grammar.
She became that State’s first woman taxi driver and had a brief stint as a professional assistant at the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor’s office in Melbourne.
She taught in Sydney, too, for four years, before being admitted to the NSW roll of solicitors in October 1924, almost five months after Byles. She founded her own firm in 1927 and relied on her connections in the union movement for work. She specialised in wage claims and also did a lot of civil liberties work.
Trouble with titles
Byles and Goldsmith appear in lists of attendees at the Incorporated Law Institute of NSW’s AGMs in the late 1930s under the title Messrs. Others, Mary Halligan and Lily Hamilton, a licensed conveyancer, joined them but none was as vocal as Byles. When the Chairman invited members in 1939 to give “any notice that he may think fit of a proposition to be considered at a future meeting” it was Byles who suggested “a register of mortgage practices similar to the English Law Society”. There was no discussion and the idea lapsed. Byles returned to the AGM in 1940, this time with Veronica Pike.
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce
Australia was the second country after New Zealand to give women the vote, and that came in 1902. However, the inclusion of women in the workforce – and their acceptance into the legal profession – took much longer, especially in NSW.
Ada Evans was the first to test the waters. She had been born in Essex, England, to a legal family and after obtaining an Arts degree at Sydney University, decided to enrol in law.v
The Dean, Professor Pitt Corbett, was away at the time but she was accepted in 1899 by the Acting Dean, Professor Jethro Brown. On his return, Professor Corbett was less than encouraging, telling her she did “not have the physique for law and would find medicine more suitable”.
The greater glory
Professor Brown, however, encouraged her to press on, and in a letter said: “If you cannot reap all the reward of your toil, the greater glory may be yours of sowing what others may reap – the glory of the pioneer.”
Women were not allowed to practise law at the time and the Supreme Court took five months to formally approve Evans’ enrolment as a student. By that time, she had placed fifth (of 18) in her first examinations and was attracting national attention.
Not all of it was favourable. After a critical article in the Melbourne Punch of July 13, 1899, Evans contacted the paper. In its follow-up, Punch seemed relieved to report that Evans did not wish “to encroach on man’s sphere … she is not even a woman suffragist”.
“A man’s sphere”
Evans, the magazine said, was simply studying “a subject she very much likes”. Evans wanted to take the next step after graduating in April 1902 but her path was blocked. She explained her frustration in an interview published in the Evening News on April 22.
“‘Do you contemplate practising?’ Evans was asked.
“‘There are great difficulties in the way,’ was the reply. ‘I have tried to get admittance to practise in some form. The Chief Justice, when I wanted to be admitted some time ago, pointed out that women were not admitted in London and so could not be here. I didn’t like that, for I don’t think we should slavishly follow London. I consider conveyancing excellent work. In England, women do all the hard work and get no ‘kudos’ for it … At the present time, typewriting women do a lot, but in cases where women have the brains to do the other partof the work, why should they not be paid for it?’”
The value of being a “person”
Women were not specifically disqualified from becoming lawyers, but the common law had created a significant obstacle – it did not regard a woman as a “person”. In the absence of legislation that specifically conferred rights or privileges on women, such as the right to practise law, none existed. And the NSW Parliament was in no rush to pass legislation that
would confer that specific right on Evans or any other woman.
When the law was changed in 1918, Evans, though, felt time had passed her by. She registered as a student-at-law in 1919 and in 1921 was admitted to the Bar. She was immediately offered work but declined to practise, citing family commitments.
She added that she didn’t want the standing of women “to be undermined by a show of incompetence”.
Extracted from Defending the Rights of All: A History of the Law Society of NSW by Michael Pelly and Caroline Pierce