30/03/2025
Special Article – Dame Fiona Woolf
By Isabella McNulty (As part of the Women’s Commercial Week)
As part of the Women’s Commercial Week, we are releasing various articles celebrating recent legal news surrounding women’s successes and achievements, including a special article focusing on the life and achievements of Dame Fiona Woolf. To find out more about the Women’s Commercial Week, read here.
Why is Dame Fiona Woolf significant?
Dame Fiona Woolf, born in 1948, was the first women to make partner at a city law firm. She graduated in Law and Psychology from Keele University and went on to study comparative law at the University of Strasbourg. In her time at CMS Cameron McKenna, she specialised in major infrastructure developments, particularly in regard to infrastructure legislation and energy markets. She remained partner until 2004, whilst simultaneously working around the globe from India to Scandinavia, on projects like the England-France electricity inter-connector. From her career at CMS, Woolf became the second ever female Lord Mayor of London– the last one being in 1983. One of Woolf’s mayoral campaigning themes was the furtherance of women in executive careers and correction of the traditional imbalance between the sexes in senior City positions. She then became the Chancellor of the University of Law in 2014, a position which she held for four years. She has been important to the development of women in the legal field, laying down the foundations for women to start holding executive positions. The idea of a woman being a partner in a commercial firm was still very new, and by pushing these boundaries she created a role model for women in law around the country to progress in the field just as men could. Now, CMS has nearly 40% female partners, and other city firms have upwards of 40%.
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