Madge Easton Anderson

Madge Easton Anderson was a pioneer within the legal profession. Not content with becoming the first woman to practice as a solicitor in Scotland, she was the first to qualify to also practice in England and, to top it all, a founding partner of the UK’s first entirely female law firm.

Born in Glasgow, Anderson graduated with an MA from the University of Glasgow in 1916. She enrolled in the Faculty of Law the same year and while studying began training as an apprentice with the Glasgow law firm Maclay Murray & Spens.

During this time, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was passed which allowed women access to all professions and therefore the potential to become lawyers.

Anderson qualified the following year at the age of 24 but becoming a professional lawyer in reality was not straightforward because her apprenticeship was not recognised on the basis that it had begun three years before the Sex Disqualification Act was passed. She successfully challenged this technicality in the Court of Session and was allowed to sit her final law exams, which she passed, in 1920.

From the beginning, Anderson was committed to the role of law in achieving social justice and over the following decade she volunteered as a ‘Poor Man’s Lawyer’ to help those in need of free legal advice in the Anderston area of Glasgow.

In 1937 she qualified as a solicitor in England and based herself in London, setting up a partnership with Edith Annie Berthan and Beatrice Honour Davy, a ground-breaking arrangement in consisting of an all-female team, which continued until 1951.

Anderson spent her final years running a hotel in Perthshire before retiring to Perth where she died in 1982, a trail-blazer who paved the way for women to enter the legal profession in which around half of all lawyers are now female.