Marian Bruce is an Australian lawyer who studied law at the University of Sydney and was admitted to the bar in Australia in 1952. Her documented career was in legal practice in New South Wales, where she worked as a partner of the Sydney firm Phillips Fox.
Education
Marian Bruce's documented legal education took place at the University of Sydney, where she received the Bachelor of Laws. The Sydney Law School was inaugurated in 1855 as one of the university's first three faculties, alongside Arts and Medicine, although for its early decades it worked mainly through examination rather than teaching.
A full teaching program began in 1890, when Pitt Cobbett was appointed to the first law chair and became the faculty's first dean. The school was the first Australian law school to admit women, and in 1899 Ada Evans became the first woman to enrol for the Bachelor of Laws there. Admission to practice in New South Wales was historically governed by the courts and their admission boards, and a university law degree was not in itself a prerequisite for entry.
Career
Bruce was admitted to the bar in Australia in 1952, and her documented professional career centred on legal practice in Sydney. She worked there as a partner of Phillips Fox, a firm that traced its origins to a practice founded in 1864 as P.D. Phillips.
The firm's later history was shaped by its association with DLA Piper, a global law firm, which began in November 2006 under the name DLA Phillips Fox. In 2011 DLA Piper took over the Australian practice and the Phillips Fox name was closed.
Women entered the New South Wales legal profession only gradually before Bruce's admission. Marie Byles, who completed a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Sydney in 1924, became the first practising female solicitor in New South Wales.
