Lynette Gerathy's documented life is connected with Sydney, the capital of New South Wales in south-eastern Australia, where she completed her university studies and where her professional base is recorded.
Sydney's university history began with the University of Sydney, founded in 1850 as Australia's first university. Her studies there placed her within that institution's long history as a centre of higher education in the state.
Gerathy studied at the University of Sydney, where she completed a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws. The university's faculties include both economics and law, so her two degrees correspond to fields the institution taught.
The University of Sydney was established by an act of the New South Wales Parliament in 1850 and was built on principles of religious tolerance and admission on academic merit. It was one of the first public, non-denominational universities in the British Empire, and teaching began in 1852 with a small group of professors.
The faculty of law was added in the 1880s and 1890s, after the university's early foundation in arts. The university admitted women to its undergraduate courses from 1881, one of the earliest universities in the world to do so.
Gerathy's documented professional history begins with her admission to the bar in New South Wales in 1981. In New South Wales, admission as a lawyer allows a person to practise either as a barrister or as a solicitor, with separate regulatory bodies overseeing each branch of the profession.
Solicitors in the state are represented and regulated by the Law Society of New South Wales. The organisation was formalised as the Incorporated Law Institute of New South Wales in 1884 and was renamed the Law Society of New South Wales in 1960. Gerathy's recorded professional base is in Sydney, the state's legal and commercial centre.
