- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1951 : July]
-
-
- Date
- July 1951
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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North Carolina historical review [1951 : July]
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The North Carolina
Historical Review
Vol. XXVIII JULY, 1951 Number 3
LEGAL EDUCATION IN NORTH CAROLINA, 1820-1860
By Fannie Memory Farmer
The matter of getting a legal education in the years prior
to the Civil War was not as difficult as it is today. That is,
there was no requirement of any particular time of study; and
there were no prerequisite courses. A young man could study
alone for a few months and then try the bar examination ; he
could arrange to read law with some established practitioner ; he
might prefer to attend one of the so-called law schools in North
Carolina; or he might go out of his home state to one of the
northern schools.1 Legal education was more practical and less
theoretical than it is today. The student generally watched the
lawyer perform the routine tasks in his office, went with him
into the courtroom, and picked up bits of information from older
men and from books which the teacher owned. Several of the
lawers who formed or organized schools began putting the in¬
struction on a more systematic basis than had been the case at
first, yet the law teacher continued to practice his profession
first and to teach second.
Law was a popular profession in the ante-bellum years. The
editor of the North Carolina University Magazine wrote in 1857,
“Law stands first in respectability in the eyes of the young man,
and consequently the greater number must choose that. . . .”2
A goodly number did choose the law: the 1850 census, the first
to list the professions, gave the number of lawyers in North
Carolina as
39Э.3
The census of 1860 listed the number as 500.*
1 After 1800 few. men studied law in. England; before that date, ho.wever, a goodly number
of North Carolinians • were -admitted to the 'English Inns of Court. See Joseph Gregoire -de
Roulhac Hamilton, “Southern Members of the Inns of Court,” North Carolina Historical
Review, X (October, .1932),- 274,.. 279. • ■ •
2 “Editorial Table,” North Carolina University Magazine, VII {November, 1857), 1S7.
3 Seventh Censue of the United States, 1850, 318.
* Higkth Census of the United States, I860, 363.
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