Apprenticeship, the Dominant Model of Legal Education

Through the first half of the 19th century, a system of apprenticeship coupled with formal examination was the standard by which students of law reached the bar. The students received a "practical" training in the daily routines of the law office; their preceptors guided them through a series of texts on natural, common, civil, and international law, quizzing them as they progressed.

The attorneys, in turn, received a fee from each student and an untiring source of free labor to fill out forms, copy legal documents, and run errands. As his practice grew, the lawyer simply took on additional clerks to assist him with the mounting paperwork. The Pennsylvania bar required clerkship with an established practitioner for three years before a student was eligible for examination and admission to the bar.

The apprenticeship of George Sharswood (1810-1883) portrays the system at its best. In 1828, shortly after graduating from the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Sharswood entered the office of Joseph Reed lngersoll (1786-1868). Though just 42 years old, lngersoll already commanded one of Philadelphia's largest and most successful practices. He was a popular and able preceptor who had taught at least 45 students before Sharswood.

lngersoll directed his students' reading, examined them at regular intervals, and "took care by employing them in the preparation of pleadings and other legal papers - in making searches in the offices, and occasionally attending before magistrates and arbitrators, that they should be initiated in the practice of their profession." His students paid him the fee of $400 for these services.

Sharswood wrote of his clerkship as "years of assiduous employment and of earnest and uninterrupted study." He read widely among the traditional legal texts, studied French, Latin and Greek, and joined the Law Academy of Philadelphia, an organization of students and young lawyers dedicated to "the promotion of legal knowledge and forensic eloquence." At the conclusion of three years of training, four court-appointed attorneys separately examined him for admission. On the motion of his preceptor, Sharswood was admitted to practice in September 1831.

When the apprenticeship system functioned well, it afforded young students the invaluable chance to study law with an acknowledged leader of the bar, while gaining practical job experience.

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