Agnes Leechman was one of the first hundred women to graduate in Law from the University of Glasgow. She was born in Glasgow on 17th February 1908 to Barbara and Walter Leechman. In the year in which she graduated Ll.B. (1932), her father’s reputation as a lawyer entered the annals of international legal history when the House of Lords decided Donaghue v Stevenson. The case which fundamentally altered the law of product liability and consumer protection began taking shape in Walter Leechman’s Glasgow office when he took on a pro bono case arising from Mrs. Mae Donaghue’s discovery of a snail in her ginger beer in a Paisley café. Two of Walter’s children, Agnes and her older brother James, studied Law at Glasgow. Agnes took an Arts degree first and graduated M.A. in 1929. For the next three years she tackled the Law curriculum, occasionally with difficulty, and graduated LL.B. in 1932. It seemed that she planned a career as a solicitor as she returned to pass Conveyancing and Evidence and Procedure as a postgraduate in 1939. Two years later she married a solicitor, John Boylan Lambie, then on war service in the R.A.F. The couple had two children. Whatever course her career took after that, and she may have continued with legal work, she did not petition the Court of Session to be admitted as a solicitor. Agnes died in 1973, aged 65. Her brother, Lord James Graham Leechman had a successful career as an advocate before becoming Solicitor General for Scotland and a Senator of the College of Justice.
Sources
University of Glasgow Registry and General Council Records
Scotlands People
