Objectives

The AWS aims to be the essential national network helping to promote the potential and success of each women solicitor at every stage of her career. The AWS strives to:

* articulate and represent the views of women solicitors;

* promote women’s interests in the profession;

* campaign on issues important to women solicitors; and

* actively oppose discrimination against women solicitors.

How the AWS started

The first woman to become a solicitor, Carrie Morrison, qualified in 1923. It had taken the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 for women to be permitted to become solicitors or barristers at all. Initially the AWS was an informal grouping of young female articled clerks who met in the early 1920s in vacant classrooms after lectures. 1923 is generally regarded as being the AWS’s founding year. The Association’s first public function was the entertaining of a group of American women lawyers in July 1930 and its first Annual Dinner was held in 1934.

Over 18,000 women solicitors are members of the AWS, which has a strong network of Regional Groups in different parts of England and Wales.