“There was famously the partner who said there’d be a woman partner in over his dead body,” said Clare Maurice, founder and senior partner at Maurice Turnor Gardner, as she looks back on becoming Allen & Overy’s first female partner in 1985.

Her appointment, which she described as a “seismic and extraordinary moment”, was significant, both within and outside of the firm, especially since the lack of female representation in City firms at the time was increasingly becoming an issue.