In thinking about women in law schools in the 1970s and 1980s, I want to begin with the impact on education, including higher education, of the significant political, economic and cultural shifts in the 1950s and 1960s. I am five years younger than Brenda Hale, and I come from a different family background. But both Brenda and I were at grammar schools in England in the early 1960s. Opportunities for girls were embedded in the education system in subtle and less subtle ways. The Robbins Report in 1963 drew attention to the way girls were siphoned into training as teachers and nurses, and the small number opting for science degrees. It is extraordinary to discover that only just over 2 per cent of girls and 5.6 per cent of boys went on to university in 1962. Some boys had alternative career tracks to the legal and accountancy professions via articled clerkships (often obtained through family connections). Twice as many girls went on to teacher training, but, again, the overall numbers were small. Because secondary schools were selective – and I know from my later research into women law professors that many law students came from private schools – Brenda and I, from the age of eleven, were already mixing with a relatively small range of peers.