Ivy Williams

Ivy Williams, who lived from September 7, 1877, to February 18, 1966, was the first woman called to the English bar, called on May 10, 1922, ahead of a rival claimant to the honor, Olive Clapham, who had passed her bar examinations slightly earlier but was not actually called until 1924. Rather than practicing law, Williams became the first woman to teach law at a British university, holding a post at the Society of Oxford Home Students from 1920 to 1945. In 1923 she became the first woman awarded the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, recognized for her scholarly work on Swiss civil law. She had earned an LLB from the University of London in 1901 and an LLD in 1903, and had studied law at Oxford as only the third woman to do so, though regulation changes meant she could not actually receive her Oxford degrees until 1920.