A Celebration of Women in Law

We are delighted to invite you (or a suitable representative) to “A Celebration of Women in Law”, hosted by The Chief Executives’ Club at Queen’s University Belfast in partnership with the First 100 Years project, A&L Goodbody and Danske Bank. This celebratory event will take place on 28 November 2024, from 8:30am – 10:30am, at Riddel Hall, 185 Stranmillis Road, Belfast, BT9 5EE.

This celebration marks the 10th anniversary of the First 100 Years project, founded by Dana Denis-Smith. This ground-breaking project is dedicated to ensuring a strong and equal future for all women in law, by raising awareness of their history and inspiring future generations of female lawyers.

The event will feature an ‘In Conversation With’ panel discussion, with distinguished guests:

• Rt Hon The Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE, the first female President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
• Lady Chief Justice The Right Honourable Siobhan Keegan DBE, the first woman to serve as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland
• Professor Aoife O’Donoghue, Professor of Law at Queen's University Belfast and co-director of the Doing Feminist Legal Work Network and the Northern/Ireland Feminist Judgments project
• Sophie Crumlin, a final-year Law with Politics student, Queen’s University Belfast

This conversation will explore the remarkable progress of women in law, while addressing ongoing challenges in the profession. The event is not only focused on women’s rights but is committed to the belief that gender, race, religion, or any other personal attributes should never hinder anyone's career in the workplace.

We would be delighted to have you join us for this thought-provoking event.

Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis so please RSVP at your earliest convenience.

We look forward to welcoming you on this special occasion.

About our Speakers

Lady Chief Justice Keegan

Dame Siobhan Keegan graduated from Queen’s University Belfast in 1993.  She has been a High Court Judge, served as Vice Chair of the Bar of Northern Ireland, Chair of the Young Bar, Chair of the Family Bar Association, Chair of the Bar Charity Committee and a member of the Bar Professional Conduct Committee. Dame Siobhan was the Judge in Residence at the Queen’s University Belfast and became a Bencher of the Northern Ireland Inn of Court, an Honorary Bencher of Gray’s Inn and an Honorary Bencher of King’s Inns in 2022. She was a member of the Judicial Studies Board (JSB) and was also the Northern Ireland representative on the Franco-British-Irish Judicial Cooperation Committee. Dame Siobhan has been the Presiding Coroner, the Senior Family Judge in the High Court of Northern Ireland, the designated Northern Ireland judicial member of the International Hague Network of Judges, was a Commissioner in the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission (NIJAC) and is now Chair of NIJAC. Dame Siobhan was made an honorary member of the Society of Legal Scholars. She was sworn in as Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland on 2 September 2021.  In 2023, Queen’s University Belfast conferred upon her an honorary degree in ‘Doctor of Laws for Distinction in Public Service’.

Baroness Hale of Richmond

Lady Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond, retired in January 2020 as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the apex court for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. She was educated at Richmond High School for Girls, in North Yorkshire, and Girton College, Cambridge, where she is now Visitor, and called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn. After graduating, she spent 18 years teaching, researching and writing in Law at the University of Manchester, also practising for a while at the Manchester Bar. She then became a member of the Law Commission, a statutory body which makes proposals for the reform of the Law. Her proudest achievement there was the Children Act 1989. In 1994, she was appointed a High Court Judge, the first to have made a career as an academic and public servant rather than as a top barrister. In 1999 she was promoted to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and in 2004 became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in the House of Lords, the first and sadly the only woman ever to hold that office. In 2009 the ‘Law Lords’ were transformed into Justices of the newly established Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. She became its Deputy President in 2013 and President in 2017.  On 24 September 2019, she announced the unanimous decision of the court in the case ofR (Miller) v The Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41.

Dana Denis-Smith

Dana Denis-Smith is an award-winning entrepreneur, leading campaigner for equality, TEDx speaker and philanthropist. Dana is the CEO of Obelisk Support, a legal services provider offering flexible legal solutions to FTSE100 companies, law firms and growing businesses, UK-based or multinational. Obelisk’s remote worker platform has over 2,000+ lawyers, many parents needing to work flexibly around their family commitments. A TedX speaker, Dana regularly speaks at industry events and in the media on gender equality, entrepreneurship and legal technology. She has won numerous awards, most recently in 2019, when she was recognised by the Legal 500 for Outstanding Achievement in Legal Services, and, in 2018, she was voted Legal Personality of the Year at the LexisNexis Awards. She holds an honorary doctorate in laws from the University of Worcester. In 2014, she founded the First 100 Years, a national campaign to celebrate the first 100 years of women in the legal profession in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The campaign culminated in centenary celebrations on 23 December 2019 and now focuses on the next 100 years, campaigning around key issues for women in law.

Jenny Moore, Danske Bank 

Jenny has worked as the Senior Employment Lawyer for Danske Bank UK since May 2020, joining NI’s largest bank having held legal positions within the NI Civil Service and prior to that, Senior Associate with A&L Goodbody. From June 2016 to November 2021 she sat on the Board of Women’s Aid NI, and currently acts as Chair of the CBI’s Future Leaders’ Forum. She is also Co-Chair of Young Enterprise NI, NI’s leading enterprise education charity - inspiring over 90,000 students each year to ensure they leave education prepared for life & work. In November 2021 she was named In-House Lawyer of the Year by the Next 100 Years Inspirational Women in Law Awards & was the Irish News Lawyer of the Month in December 2021. In 2022 she was awarded ‘Best in Professional Services – Corporate’ by Women in Business. In November 2023 Danske Bank were awarded Employee Wellbeing Initiative of the Year for their employment policy work at the inaugural International Employment Lawyer Awards in London. Jenny is an Employment Law Tutor at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies and a Tutor in Equity Law at Queens University Belfast. In 2024 she proudly became a UK Champion for Next 100 Years #Pavingtheway campaign which seeks to raise £100K for an undergraduate scholarship fund supporting students whose research examines women’s legal history and their contribution to the evolution of the UK’s legal system.

Professor Joan Loughrey, Queen’s University Belfast

Professor Joan Loughrey joined the School of Law in February 2022 after eighteen years at Leeds where her roles included Director of the Centre for Business Law and Practice, then Deputy Head of School from 2013, and from January 2020-May 2021 Interim Head of School. She was also chair of the School Equality Diversity and Inclusion committee and member of Faculty Equality Diversity and Inclusion committee, and Athena Swan School lead and member of Faculty Athena Swan working group at Leeds. She was one of the first three women to be internally promoted to professor in the School of Law at Leeds. After obtaining her degree in Jurisprudence from Somerville College, Oxford University, she qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and then in Hong Kong. Her research interests are in corporate law and corporate governance-particularly the regulation of directors and enforcement of directors' duties, shareholder litigation, and the regulation of the legal profession. She has published widely in these areas in peer reviewed journals including the Modern Law Review, the Law Quarterly Review, Legal Studies and the Journal of Law and Society. Her monograph, Corporate Lawyers and Corporate Governance was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She has been the Principal Investigator on a £281,517 interdisciplinary AHRC funded project 'Business Judgment and the Courts' and a Co-Investigator on an £325k ESRC/Newton Fund award for a project entitled 'Developing financial systems to support sustainable growth in China' led by Professor Gerard McCormick (Leeds).  In 2024 the School of Law at Queens was awarded the Athena SWAN Silver Award, only the second Law School to have received this recognition.

Professor Aoife O’Donoghue, Queen’s University Belfast 

Aoife O'Donoghue is a Professor of Law at Queen's University Belfast, having previously worked at Durham Law School. Aoife's work encompasses all areas of public law, including international, transnational and domestic law. Aoife uses feminist legal theory, law and literature, prefiguration and legal history alongside tyranny and utopias to consider and challenge accepted narratives about what the law is or could be. Her monographs on tyranny and global constitutionalism are both published with CUP. She has also worked extensively on Brexit and Northern Ireland. She is the co-director of the Doing Feminist Legal Work Network and the Northern/Ireland Feminist Judgments project and is currently working on a project on feminist prefigurative constitutional futures for the island.

Sophie Crumlin, Queen’s University Student 

A final year Law with Politics student from Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, Sophie recently participated in the first cohort of the Clinton Careers Insight Programme as part of the Clinton Scholarship Fund. As a first-generation student, she is passionate about the accessibility of education and how this ties in with socio-economic issues. Due to this passion Sophie has been involved in campus roles to help address these issues, including working as a student assistant for the Widening Participation Unit and volunteering as a course representative. Additionally, she spent three weeks in Nashville as part of the Belmont University Summer Programme including learning about socio-economic issues in Nashville and how this correlates with issues in Northern Ireland.