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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]