Celebrating a century of women in law

SCOTLAND'S first female lawyers – who graduated from the Faculty of Law at Edinburgh University Law School exactly 100 years ago – are being commemorated with a series of events.

Josephine Gordon Stuart and Eveline MacLaren became Scotland's first female law graduates in 1909, both gaining LLBs and "breaking the glass ceiling" for those who followed.

A century on, their accomplishments form the basis of the Law School's "100 Years of Women in Law: An Edinburgh Centenary".

The programme of events will commemorate the lives of the two trailblazers, and honour the successes of important female figures in today's legal world.

Professor Hector MacQueen launched the events this week with a lecture entitled "Scotland's First Women Law Graduates 1909: An Edinburgh Centenary".

He said: "The celebrations mark a key moment when the Scottish legal system opened up to women for the first time, even though it took a world war to get them admitted to the legal profession from 1920 on.

"Eveline MacLaren and Josephine Stuart broke the LLB glass ceiling in 1909, and today the great majority of LLB graduates are women.

"I hope it is not another century until women also dominate the upper reaches of the Scottish legal profession."