Founding member Mary Buckley Laughton understood the importance of interchange between women in law at a time when most members worked as sole practitioners, or as the sole woman in law classes or professional in a law office, and called themselves the “one to three percenters”. She authored the first journal article by a Canadian woman lawyer.
“Women in Law”, (MacLean’s 1920), disclosed practical challenges to entering the profession, and supported progressive leadership amongst ingénue and mature women in the legal profession. Recognition of merit was axiomatic to the founders. They believed that if the law maintained this integrity, their turn would come. This was their inventive response to weave a way through a world not of their making. A scholarship set up to honour Clara Brett Martin after her death in 1923, awarded high marks achieved by a graduate of the Bar Admission Course. Thus the award was not given to Vera Parsons, the first woman silver medallist, but to a deserving male.