Gambrill was the first woman to sit as a judicial officer of the High Court
On behalf of the New Zealand judiciary, chief justice Dame Helen Winkelmann has honoured the late Anne Gambrill CNZM following Gambrill’s death on 10 February.
Gambrill had made history in the legal profession on multiple occasions – as the first female law clerk at Russell McVeagh and then as the first woman to sit as a judicial officer of the High Court.
“Anne entered the law at a time when women were simply not seen in the senior ranks of the profession. She was one of the first to break that barrier”, Winkelmann wrote in a media statement. “When she was appointed as a master of the High Court in 1987 (a role now known as associate judge) she became the first woman to sit as a judicial officer of that court. Anne was exemplary in her discharge of the role: hard working, efficient and legally sound. She helped to establish the role as a permanent and important one within High Court of New Zealand”.
Gambrill began her legal career as a junior office assistant at Chapman Tripp & Co while she was still a student. She obtained her LLB from the University of Auckland in 1958.
She started practising as a solicitor at MH Vautier in 1965; five years later, she jumped to her husband’s firm Mackay & Gambrill, where she made partner in 1966. In 1977, she became the first woman to join the Legal Aid Appeal Authority.
Gambrill was one of the first two people to be named master of the High Court in 1987, alongside Pat Towle. She retired from the High Court in 2002 but still sat on occasion under an acting warrant until 2004.
She brought together the Auckland District Law Society’s first women’s group in 1976; this group would evolve into the Auckland Women Lawyers’ Association. She served as the High Court’s representative at the International Women Judges’ Conference.
Gambrill was the 48th woman admitted to the New Zealand bar and only the seventh woman to be appointed to the country’s judiciary. She also helped found the Zonta Club of Auckland, was on the Laura Fergusson Trust committee, and a former chair of the Samuel Marsden Collegiate Old Girls Association’s Auckland branch.
She received her CNZM accolade for services as a Master of the High Court.
