Foreword

Foreword

AUTUMN 2024

How wonderful is it that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Franks

We should never lose our optimism or ability to start new ideas. What we often need to achieve that, is a change of scene or community. It’s great to meet others working towards the same change and I particularly enjoy seeing visible change in our legal profession. One of the reasons for launching Legal Women was to show the importance of female lawyers being visible in the portraiture of our august professional buildings. It’s fantastic to see the response from The Inns of Court and The Law Societies of the four nations taking steps to ensure more visibility of women in the portraiture for their buildings. In the ‘good ole bad days’, oil portraits were commissioned by the President at his or her expense and then donated to The Law Society of England and Wales. This has meant that very few portraits have been made for the last few decades which of course coincides with times of change –women Presidents and people of colour. Apart from the immodesty of commissioning your own portrait it is not an insignificant cost and clearly not appropriate in the 21st century. This has been recognised recently, by an external legal group commissioning a portrait of I Stephanie Boyce, the first person of colour to be President and sixth woman to hold the role. This is a huge achievement and recognition of the importance of seeing role models inside the building that reflect the changing face of our profession. Lubna Shuja needs to be similarly recognised.

So how can we have the greatest impact in an ever-changing world and continue to support our LW community? Simply being part of a legal community campaigning for change can be sufficient; not everyone has to be an activist, but we do need to show our support, in whatever way is appropriate for us. The more one is in a community, the more confident it can make everyone in demanding change and the size of the community can make it more difficult for external authorities to resist.

In terms of seeing change, one project that has struck me as of particular importance are the initiatives on Wikipedia. Of the two million biographies on the site Wikipedia reports under 20% are of women. Women in Red, are changing the dynamic by involving hundreds of volunteers from around the world to contribute historically important individuals from a much wider variety of countries and backgrounds.

In the UK, the British archaeologist and curator Lucy Moore, started a project to ensure at least one woman from every country in the world is included. She has single handedly written biographies of over 500 women since becoming a Wikipedia editor in 2019 and is calling for volunteers. You can find her on ‘X’ @lucyajmmoore

Around the world, some groups are working together to make women visible, offering training and assistance. Spain has Wikiesfera, Italy WikiDonne for example. This reminds me of Amnesty International group letter writing initiatives – a great way to feel part of a community while making a real contribution to change. I’m not aware of an organised group in the UK working on Wikipedia but let’s all make sure we highlight any missing biographies or create a ‘red link’ which indicates that a biography needs to be added.

For each of us, whether it’s creating biographies, ensuring portraits are visible or offering some career assistance to another – this is what makes the overall project of gender equality move forward. This is why it’s so important to join a group or start a new one.

LW is a constantly evolving project as newness, in itself, has impact it’s important to reinvent from time to time.

Launching Legal Women magazine in October 2020 with a mission of Information, inspiration and innovation relating to gender equality and inclusion in the legal profession enabled me to found the community of Legal Women. One of the motivations was to capture and celebrate, across the four nations, the centenary of the admission of women to the legal profession in England and Wales. I’m enormously proud that was achieved and particularly for the spotlight turned on the lives of early women legal pioneers in our centenary edition in November 2022.

By the time of the centenary celebrations, the growing LW community enabled us to offer more than just a hard copy magazine by using our digital platforms.

Responding quickly to events and visibility is critical and, as part of our LW evolution, we will now focus on our own LW digital presence. We’ve had wonderful feedback on the magazine but it’s clear that to have the greatest impact with our current resources, we should concentrate on our online offering and events, so I am sad that this will be our last hard copy edition, at least for the time being.

I hope everyone enjoys this magazine. For the future, as well as events, both online and in person, we will be working on our digital presence featuring articles and thoughts from the LW community. Do join in, tell your friends and follow us on social media and sign up for notifications on our website Subscribe LinkedIn, X or Instagram ■

Coral Hill

Founder and Editor-in-Chief

“LW is a constantly evolving project as newness, in itself, has impact it’s important to reinvent from time to time.”

Stephanie Boyce photo credit: Michael Cross