Part 1 of 3 parts
The Study of Law
In this presentation, I shall take a very personal, indeed, idiosyncratic, look at the history of the legal profession in our jurisdiction of the ECSC, and the challenges facing our twin professions of lawyer and judge. I shall start with an examination of what it once took to become a Caribbean lawyer, and briefly compare the historical process with how it is done now. And then, I shall look at how the technology of the practice of law and of the judicial process has changed in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) sub-region over the past fifty years.
When I began my professional practice as a young and callow lawyer in Basseterre in September 1971, I did my own typing on a portable Olivetti typewriter. I did a touch-typing course after I graduated from law school, as I knew it would be years before I could afford to pay a proper typist to help me. So, I prepared to do it all myself. Many young lawyers today face the same challenges, but the work environment has completely changed. In my day, the equipment necessary for the practice of law had hardly progressed beyond that of the 18th Century. The only items in my Chambers that James Boswell would not have recognised were my manual typewriter, sheets of carbon paper, and Bic ballpoint pens.
A Legal Education
I was called to the Bar in London in June 1971, as thousands of West Indian Barristers had for 300 years before me. There was, at that time, neither a Cave Hill Campus nor any Sir Hugh Wooding Law School that I could go to. There was no point in my getting a US or a Canadian law degree, as those qualifications were unrecognised, in the sense of allowing me to practise law back home. The only legal education accepted in the OECS was a UK one.
If you were a brilliant student you might win a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge University. Otherwise, you might stay home and do an external degree at London University. Or, if your family could afford it, you could privately attend a UK university, or the Inns of Court School of Law, and be called to the Bar of England and Wales, before you came back to practise law in the OECS. That is what I did, with the help of a scholarship from my father’s employer, Tate & Lyle Ltd.
I have often been asked, why was a law school called an “Inn of Court”? As with so many things in the law, the name is a matter of history. In the earliest period of English legal education, say from about 1100 to about 1300, the way a young, would-be lawyer got qualified was by following the Judge around while he was doing a Circuit of the towns in the County, and listening and learning as he heard cases and settled disputes. The student would attend court and take notes of the legal issues and the Judge’s rulings. During the evenings, the students gathered around the Judge at dinner at the same hotel, or inn, where the Judge was staying. They asked him questions about the disputes he had settled that day, and they took notes. This being an inn, they drank a lot of wine.
How did a lawyer’s qualification to practise law come to be known as a “call to the bar”? The Judge would arrive in a town where his Commission from the King authorised him to sit and to do justice. His Commission would be read out aloud by the Town Crier, and petitioners for justice would begin to gather. A corner of the market hall would be cleared of traders, and new straw thrown down on the floor so the Judge would not dirty his shoes. A bench and a table would be set up for him to hear the suits brought by the town’s citizens. Early English judges really did sit on a simple bench in a market hall. A plain wooden barrier would be erected across the floor of the hall to keep the pigs and sheep, which typically shared market hall space with their traders, away from the Judge. The litigants who had paid a fee to a court official to draft their claim or defence would throng around waiting for their case to be called. And, the students would be present ready to take notes. Only the bar kept them from jostling the Judge.
When a case was called, the Judge might ask the litigant or accused person if he had a lawyer. If he indicated he did not, and the Judge thought he needed one, he would look around the hall. If there was no willing advocate available, or the litigant could not afford one, and the Judge saw a student of his who he thought was sufficiently advanced in his studies, and could help the accused, he might call on him to approach the bar, and he would ask him to assist. This process amounted to recognition that the student was now accepted by the Judge as worthy of addressing the Court on a case. The student was then said to have been “called to the Bar”.
By the 15th Century, there were established in London around the city’s civil courts several Inns of Court, housing students, lawyers and judges. Eventually, they were whittled down to four: Grey’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. And, why would a law school be called a “Temple”? They were so-called since they were established in the properties originally owned by the ancient religious Order of the Knights Templar. After the abolition of the Order in 1312, lawyers came to occupy the Temple buildings. They formed themselves into two societies, the Inner Temple and Middle Temple, first mentioned by name in a manuscript yearbook of 1388. Their Charter as law colleges was signed by King James I in 1608.
As Anthony Wagner wrote, the Inns of Court became in effect the third university of England, to which the nobility and gentry sent their sons to acquire knowledge of the world and of a subject then as useful as any for the management of property and the pursuit of worldly and political ambitions.
The Inns of Court were thus, though not given a charter as a university, the third oldest law school, after Oxford (1096) and Cambridge (1209). The Inns were organised on the same basis as the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, offering accommodation to practitioners of the law and their students, and facilities for education and dining. Professional law exams were introduced at the Inns for the first time only in the year 1853.
Up to the time I qualified as a Barrister, you could not be called to the Bar unless you had dined the requisite number of a dozen times at your Inn. Passing your examinations was not sufficient for you to graduate. The dinners were compulsory, and were a reminder of the early history of legal education.
In the year 1674, the Leeward Islands Colony consisting of Antigua, St Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat got its first federal style legislature with a General Assembly made up of two planter and merchant representatives from each of the member islands. It met regularly until 1711. By the time of the General Assembly of the Leeward Islands in 1705, several of the representatives had been called to the Bar in England. They set about establishing a system of law familiar to them for their islands’ governance. One of the first Acts they passed was to declare the common law of England part of the law of the Leeward Islands. From that time on in our islands, Barristers have always done all the legal work done in England up to the reforms of 1875 by Barristers, Proctors, Attorneys, and Solicitors. So it was that, when I was called to the Bar in St Kitts in 1971, I was admitted as a ‘Barrister and Solicitor of the West Indies Associated States Supreme Court’. This was the court that was established by the Supreme Court Order of 1967, and which is still our court, though renamed the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.
The English came to separate the work of Barristers and Solicitors long after we in the Eastern Caribbean had adopted the common law, and our courts came to recognise English qualifications. As with the United States of America, most of our islands never adopted the system of the two separate legal professions of Barrister and Solicitor.
An OECS law student could until recently, in theory, go to England and study to be a Solicitor rather than a Barrister. However, when I was a law student, a student Solicitor, called an ‘Articled Clerk’, had to have family and other connections to join a firm of Solicitors in England. Few West Indians had that advantage. Also, a Solicitor’s education, including passing the examinations set by the Law Society, lasted for a minimum of five years, compared to the three years typically required to be called to the Bar. Very few Eastern Caribbean lawyers, mainly some from Trinidad and Jamaica, took the longer route of studying to become a Solicitor.
I went from Trinidad to the UK in 1964 to complete my “O-Levels”, and to do my “A-Levels”, as my High School did not offer A-Levels. Once I got my A-Levels, I was qualified to apply for admittance to an Inn and to study for the Bar. I joined a Jamaican school friend, who was also planning to study law and come back to the West Indies, in gaining admittance to the Inner Temple in London in the year 1967. I was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1971. The system of education at the Inns of Court was a thorough one. It involved attending lectures given by law professors during the day, and tutorials by practising barristers in the evening, followed by exams at the end of the year. There were among us a few students who spent as little as one year at the Inns of Court School of Law. They had first obtained a university bachelor of laws degree, and were required to do only a shortened, crash course at an the School of Law to be qualified to be called to the Bar.
For centuries, only Oxford and Cambridge Universities provided the LLB degree. Everyone in the Eastern Caribbean who wanted to be a Barrister, and was like me not bright enough to win a scholarship, or rich enough to privately attend Oxford or Cambridge University, had to join an Inn and attend the Inns of Court School of Law for a legal education, lasting a minimum of three years, plus eating the requisite number of dinners. With a degree, you were only required to do the final year at the Inns of Court School of Law, plus eat the requisite number of twelve dinners.
London University was founded in 1836, and is the third oldest university in England. What was remarkable about this university was that from as early as the year 1858 it allowed students to do the LLB course externally. By the early 20th Century, the first wave of redbrick Universities, such as Liverpool and Birmingham, began to offer law as a degree course. Warwick University and several others were chartered in the late 20th Century, and also offer the LLB degree. Today, there are dozens of institutions offering the LLB degree, and many West Indians have taken up the opportunity to study for the LLB at them.
But, London University was different. From the earliest period, you could stay at home in Grenada or Antigua, and do most of the course by mail, going to the UK only for a few months to sit your final exams. For many West Indians who could not afford to spend years in the UK attending a full-time course of studies, that was a godsend. Clearly it was much more affordable to have to spend only a few months away in London than to have to spend the entire three years. It may have taken a little longer that way, maybe four or five years to get the degree, and then another year or so in London to be called to the Bar, but it was affordable. In those early days, once you were called to the English Bar, you were automatically qualified to be called to the Bar anywhere in the Eastern Caribbean.
When you passed your final exams at the Inns of Court School of Law, you obtained what was called the “Degree of the Utter Bar”. In a magnificent ceremony held in the Great Hall of your Inn, after eating good food and drinking much wine, you were presented with your Certificate of Call to the Bar, which signified that you had successfully passed your exams and were now qualified to practise at the Bar of the courts of England and Wales.
The system of Caribbean legal education I have described has all now passed into history. Every OECS law student in England today is required to first obtain a bachelor’s of law degree from a university, and then attend the requisite professional training course for one year. Since 2008, the Inns of Court no longer provide a legal education in England. But, you still have to join an Inn, and only your Inn can call you to the Bar of England and Wales. And, you have to complete 12 of what are now called ‘qualifying sessions’ in order to be called to the Bar. Qualifying sessions take a number of forms. Yes, they still include attending dinners at your Inn. But you can, alternatively, attend special education days, or attendance at weekends, either at your Inn or at a residential centre, such as Cumberland Lodge, which are convenient methods for out-of-London students.
Since the mid-1970s, the University of the West Indies and the various law schools associated with it now provide a much less expensive and much more relevant legal education for the vast majority of OECS law students. In some of our islands, particularly the British Overseas Territories, a British legal education is not only acceptable, but is for many of us, because of UWI’s restricted quota system, the only practical way to become legally qualified. With a British legal qualification, an OECS law student who wishes to practise law at home needs only do a shortened Conversion Course at one of our Law Schools. Additionally, as part of a reciprocal arrangement, certain US and Canadian qualifications are now recognised, and lawyers with those qualifications may be admitted to practise law in the OECS after attending a Conversion Course.
[To be continued]
