University of Richmond Law Review Volume 14 | Issue 1 Article 9 1979 The iH story of Legal Education in Virginia W. Hamilton Bryson University of Richmond Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/lawreview Part of the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation W. H. Bryson, The History of Legal Education in Virginia, 14 U. Rich. L. Rev. 155 (1979). Available at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/lawreview/vol14/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Richmond Law Review by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE HISTORY OF LEGAL EDUCATION IN VIRGINIA W. Hamilton Bryson* I. BEFORE 1779 The English Inns of Court in London had ceased to perform their educational functions in the middle of the seventeenth century.' For the next hundred years or so, there was no formal or organized instruction of the English common law. Lawyers, both barristers and solicitors in England and in America, learned their profession as best they could in unstructured situations. They learned by serv- ing as apprentices or clerks to practicing lawyers, by the indepen- dent reading of law books, and by observation in the courtroom itself.2 Although the four Inns of Court in the eighteenth century no longer gave an education, they did give the professional degree of barrister. A barrister was deemed to be of the social degree of an esquire. The Inns of Court thrived in the eighteenth century because they controlled the admission of barristers to the practice of law, pretended to supervise the general conduct of the bar, and provided office space and a social club for their members.