In Pennsylvania 1862-1865 - reading the law
Between Jonathan Jasper Wright’s completion of studies in Ithaca at the Lancasterian School in 1862 and his first departure for South Carolina in mid-1865, his time was consumed by two activities - teaching in Springville and Wilkes-Barre, and reading the law with attorneys in each city.
Reading the law, a form of apprenticeship, was the primary way lawyers in the United States were trained until the late 19th century. Abraham Lincoln was the most famous American who went through this process, being admitted as a lawyer in the state of Illinois in 1836 after several years of self-study. Lincoln’s admission required a statement of good character and an oral examination by two justices of the Illinois Supreme Court. This is very similar to the process that Jonathan Jasper Wright eventually undertook in Susquehanna County, which we will cover in a future post.
Given the ubiquity of law schools in the present day, this method of learning and certification may seem unusual - but in the day it was dominant. In Susquehanna County, based on a review of lawyers admitted to the bar prior to 1870, more than 90% were “graduates” of reading the law - and most of the remaining 10% were lawyers already certified in another state but new to Susquehanna County.
Apprenticeship as a training mechanism for the law is discussed in the excellent paper, “Legal Education in the United States: A Brief History,” by Susan Katcher of the University of Wisconsin Law School, published in the July 2006 edition of the Wisconsin International Law Journal.
…Legal instruction in the early days of the republic continued to be provided by an apprenticeship, which tended to be uninspiring… “[F]or a fee, the lawyer-to-be hung around an office, read Blackstone . . . and copied legal documents. If he was lucky, he benefited from watching thelawyer do his work, and do it well. If he was very lucky, the lawyer actually tried to teach him something.” …
Apprenticeship “was useful to everybody: to the clerks, who picked up some knowledge of law . . . and to the lawyers, who (in the days before telephones, typewriters . . . ) badly needed copyists and legmen.” The apprentice gained practical experience and frequently received excellent instruction in law by his supervising lawyer.Indeed, some of these supervising lawyers were so skilled that they gave tutorials and established their own private schools. The schools that evolved from these apprentice-based lectures were the beginnings of institutional legal training in the United States.
Preview of coming attractions - one of those “supervising lawyers” who established a law school was an attorney very important to this newsletter.
Here are some key texts that aspiring lawyers would study in the early-mid 1800s:
Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone, referenced above, which was also Lincoln’s primary text.
Lincoln also is known to have studied these books:
A Practical Treatise on Pleadings by Joseph Chitty
A Treatise on the Law of Evidence by Simon Greenleaf
Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence by Joseph Story.
Sources:
Lincoln info from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
Susquehanna County law admissions from History of Susquehanna County Pennsylvania by Emily C. Blackman. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1873.