When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings. (Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, US writer and reformer)

Clara Brett Martin was born in Toronto in 1874. She graduated from Trinity College, Toronto, in 1890. In 1891, she petitioned the Law Society for admission as a student. She requested admission “notwithstanding that she is a lady,” grounding her argument on precedent in “other lands” and relying on “the broad spirit of liberality and fairness that characterizes members of the legal profession.” The petition was turned down.

Thus began a battle that lasted six years. Its players were the Law Society, Clara Brett Martin, the Ontario Legislature, national women’s organizations, and the press. The case was followed closely around the world. When she was finally called to the bar of Ontario in 1897, Martin became the first woman lawyer in the British Commonwealth. British women had to wait until 1919 to be called to the bar. In Quebec, women were not allowed to practise as advocates until 1941 and as notaries until 1956.

Following the Lead
Clara Brett Martin was not followed by a large wave of applicants. By 1918, less than one-half of 1% of lawyers in Ontario were women. Some women were studying law informally and were involved in law-related activities. But law remained of limited interest to most women.

Women’s associations fought for greater employment opportunities for women; but apart their support of Martin, they made no concerted efforts to open up the legal profession. Law seemed too radical a career choice.

“Not Wild Women ...”
... reflected Mr. Justice Riddell looking back on the first women lawyers. However, the admission of women initially created an uproar. Riddell himself had been opposed to Clara Brett Martin’s campaign. Legal journals doubted the “manliness” of those who had allowed women into the profession. Later describing her years as a law student, Martin spoke of her isolation, bitterness and embarrassment.

Riddell proceeded to comment that, in court, women displayed “dignity and propriety.” He noted that the admission of women had not affected the bar or the courts except to open the profession to fresh talents. Otherwise, he said, “it had no conspicuous merits and no faults.”