Inns of Court

Inns of Court, in London, group of four institutions of considerable antiquity that have historically been responsible for legal education. Their respective governing bodies, the benches, exercise the exclusive right of admitting persons to practice by a formal call to the bar. They consist of the Inner Temple and Middle Temple (both housed within the area known as The Temple), Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn—all of which are located in the general vicinity of the Royal Courts of Justice, at the boundary between the City of London and Westminster.

The Inns of Court are voluntary societies, unchartered and unincorporated. Hence, their early history is obscure. Since their inception in the Middle Ages, however, they have been devoted to the technical study of English law, rather than Roman law, which was taught in the universities (see Doctors’ Commons). Previously, law was learned in the course of service, the first rudiments possibly in private clerkship to some official. By the mid-13th century, when the common law had become extensive and intricate, there arose a class of men, literate but lay, who created and dominated the legal profession and set up the Inns of Court as an answer to the problem of legal education. Manuals and books were produced in French rather than Latin. The students listened to arguments in court and discussed law among themselves.

In addition to those who practiced in the courts, there was also a large demand for stewards and legal advisers to landowners to conduct general business and keep manorial courts. These men needed the rudiments but not the refinements of common law. Such, too, was the case with the large class of attorneys and a growing class of bookkeepers and correspondence clerks. They gained most of their knowledge through an Inn of Chancery, an institution for training in the framing of writs and other legal documents used in the courts of chancery.

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Common law: Inns of Court and the Year Books

In the 14th century many of the household clerks (clergy with at least minor orders) of the chancellor’s office formed Inns and appear to have taken students for training. By the end of the century these Inns were in danger of being submerged by a flood of attorneys-to-be and students who used an Inn of Chancery as a preparation for entering an Inn of Court. Eventually, each Inn of Court secured control of one or more Inns of Chancery and supervised its affairs, appointed readers to teach in it, and later often bought its premises, becoming its landlord.

By the 15th century the Inns of Court were governed by their benchers, who had previously given at least two courses of lectures (readings) and who presided over mock arguments (moots) in which students argued difficult points of law before them.

Because the law was highly technical, proficiency could be acquired only by following the demanding studies of the Inns. In practice, the Inns thus had a monopoly over legal education. In the 15th and 16th centuries, however, many students joined the Inns for the purpose of getting a general education, rather than legal training. By the end of the 16th century the Inns of Court had begun to exclude attorneys and solicitors and refused to call them to the bar, with the result that attorneys especially fell back on the Inns of Chancery and finally came to form a profession distinct from that of the barristers.

By the beginning of the 17th century, all the Inns had acquired the actual ownership of their sites and begun building splendid halls, a process that continued through the century.

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Various causes brought on the decline of this system of education. For one thing, the great activity of the printing press led students to rely more on printed material, and as a result they neglected attendance at readings and moots. The system broke down completely during the English Civil Wars; readings ceased in 1677, and only the fees survived. Having paid them, the student was deemed to have fulfilled his duties. With no readers to recommend students for call to the bar, the four Inns in the 18th century finally agreed to call students who had been in residence a stated number of terms. Later, it was settled that eating three dinners was equivalent to attending for the whole term. Meanwhile, the Inns of Chancery were no longer adequate for so large a group as the attorneys and solicitors, and these latter therefore created their own society.

In the 19th century the common law commissioners investigated the Inns of Court, which as a result took steps to resume their educational functions. Readerships were reestablished, and lawyers were engaged in teaching with a view to examinations conducted by the Bar Council of Legal Education, representing all four Inns.

In 1974 the Inns created an administrative body, the Senate of the Inns of Court and the Bar, which oversees such matters as finance, legal reform, and educational standards.