The Happy State of the Modern Law Student

Extract

The title which I suggested for this address was prompted by some enquiries which I had recently been making into the history of my Inn—which you will forgive me for regarding as the best of the Inns of Court—the Inner Temple. In its records I had been struck with the contrast that was apparent between the life of the law student as there depicted and that of the law student of to-day. I think that in the old times for a man to come to Oxford or Cambridge, before going to London and becoming either a barrister or a solicitor, was very much less common than it is to-day. A certain number of law students no doubt went first to Oxford or Cambridge, but few of them seem to have taken a degree. I had occasion to look into the life history of seven or eight barristers at the end of the 18th century, and I found that each of them was a member of a college, either here or at Oxford, but only two of them took a degree. In those times it was much commoner for a man to spend a year or two, either here or at Oxford, and then to go on to London. The poorer ones, I think, went first to an Inn of Chancery, of which there were about ten attached to the various Inns of Court. The Inner Temple had four of the attached to it—Clement's Inn, Clifford's Inn, New Inn, and Lyon's Inn.