The Legal Profession

Abstract

This chapter traces the history of the English legal profession, which begins around 1200. From the start there was a distinction between advocacy and attorneyship. The pleaders in the Court of Common Pleas became around 1300 the order of serjeants at law, from whom the superior judges were chosen. A law school for ‘apprentices of the Bench’ in the thirteenth century was remodelled in the next century as a collegiate system, the inns of court and chancery, with its own learning exercises and degrees (bencher and barrister). Barristers practised as advocates, but not in the Common Pleas. In Tudor times solicitors appeared, as general practitioners. Serjeants lost their primacy to the newer rank of king’s counsel, but survived into Victorian times. Accounts are given of the judiciary and its independence, of the Civilian practitioners in Doctors’ Commons, and of the transfer of legal education to the universities.