The trailblazers who led women into the Irish legal profession

Many significant barriers remain, as detailed elsewhere in today’s edition of Irish Legal News, but great strides have been made on a century ago, when the law was the exclusive domain of men.

To mark International Women’s Day, Irish Legal News celebrates the trailblazers who paved the way for women in the legal profession.

Frances Kyle and Averill Deverell

On being admitted to the King’s Inns in November 1921, Frances Kyle and Averill Deverell became the first woman barristers in the world. Ms Kyle simultaneously became the first woman to win the John Brooke Scholarship for coming first in the bar exam. Ms Deverell went on to become the first woman barrister to practice in the Irish courts. The first woman barrister in England was not called until May 1922.

Mary Dorothea Heron

In 1923, Mary Dorothea Heron became the first woman admitted to the Law Society of Ireland as a solicitor. She eventually joined her uncle’s law firm in Belfast and spent most of her career working there, doing probate work, until 1946 — at which point the number of women in the Irish solicitor profession was still in the double-digits.

Professor Frances E. Moran

An early pioneer for women in the barrister profession and in academia, Frances Moran broke a number of glass ceilings. She called to the bar in 1921 and became, in 1941, the first woman to take silk across these islands — years before any woman in Britain.

In 1932, she became a professor of law at Trinity College Dublin, making her the first woman law professor across these islands. In 1944, she was appointed Regius Chair of Law, becoming the first and only woman to hold that post in Britain or Ireland until 2013. TCD continues to host a Frances E. Moran Memorial Lecture every year.

Judge Eileen Kennedy

On her appointment to the District Court bench in 1964, Judge Eileen Kennedy became the first woman judge in Ireland since the Dáil Courts of the Irish Republic declared in 1920.

Born to a legal family in Dublin, she qualified as a solicitor in 1947, just one year after Ireland’s first woman solicitor left practice. On her first appearance in court, she sparked controversy by simultaneously becoming the first woman to sit in court with her head uncovered.

Mrs Justice Susan Denham

Over her esteemed career, Mrs Justice Susan Denham achieved a number of firsts. In 1992, she became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, where she sat until her retirement last year.

Nearly two decades later, she was the first woman to be appointed Chief Justice of Ireland — as well as the first non-Catholic and the first Trinity College Dublin graduate appointed to the top judicial post.

Mrs Justice Fidelma Macken

In late 1999, Ireland’s Mrs Justice Fidelma Macken SC became the first woman appointee to the European Court of Justice.

She returned to the Irish High Court bench in 2004 until her promotion to the Supreme Court in 2005, where she sat until 2012.