Grata Flos Matilda Greig was the first woman to graduate in law from the University of Melbourne. At a time when there were few women students, four of her sisters also studied at the University, two in medicine, one in science, and one in law.
Flos Greig enrolled in arts and law in 1897 and graduated in 1903, ranked second in the honours class list. No woman had yet become a lawyer in Victoria, and it was unclear whether Greig could be admitted to practise. With the help of John Mackey (a member of parliament and one of Greig's lecturers), a statute sometimes nicknamed the Flos Greig Enabling Act was passed, making it clear that women could enter the profession.
Greig was admitted to practise in 1905, becoming the first woman to practise as a lawyer in Australia. (The first woman to graduate in law in Australia, Ada Evans, received her degree from the University of Sydney in 1902 but was not allowed to practise until 1918.) Greig worked as a solicitor in Melbourne and Wangaratta, and travelled extensively in Asia.
Flos Greig was well aware of the difficulties that faced her and her female colleagues in the legal profession. In an article in the Commonwealth Law Review (1909), she wrote:
The first women lawyers are hardly likely to make fortunes. The pioneer never does. The first man that finds his way into the primeval forest exhausts his strength in clearing the ground; the second continues the work and sows the seed and erects the buildings; the third man comes along and reaps the profits of the others' labours. Nevertheless the legal profession is likely to prove of increasing interest to women, not only for the the facilities which it offers for earning a living, but also for the knowledge that is to be acquired thereby.
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