Entering upon Law Studies Editorial Note
Entering upon Law Studies
John Jay decided while he was at King’s College to enter a “Learned profession,” the law. However, his plans were complicated by the fact that the legal profession in provincial New York was a closely controlled monopoly. An informal organization of the bar functioned in the province by the early eighteenth century, and from that time admissions to legal practice became increasingly restricted.1 In 1756 the “gentlemen of the Law” in New York agreed to cease taking any clerks for a period of fourteen years, with the exception that each subscriber could take one of his sons. This agreement further provided that when clerkships were reopened, clerks must possess college degrees, that attorneys could take only one clerk at a time, and that a £200 fee and a minimum of five years’ training would be required of clerks. It was this agreement that stood in the way of Jay’s plans for the study of law, and his father’s determined efforts to provide his son with professional training are outlined, below, in Peter Jay to James Jay, 14 April 1763; to John Jay, 23 August 1763; and to David Peloquin, 15 November 1763.2
1. In 1730 the Supreme Court ruled that no judge of the Court could recommend a candidate for admission to practice unless that person had served for seven years with an attorney of the Court or had completed an apprenticeship with an attorney at Westminster. In 1732 the bar association agreed to employ only its own members as assistant counsel in practice before the Supreme Court, while the Montgomerie Charter of 1731 conferred a monopoly of practice in the Mayor’s Court of New York City upon eight attorneys listed by name, with the governor empowered to fill vacancies on the list only when fewer than six of the original attorneys were still in practice. , 35–36, 103; Richard B. Morris, ed., Select Cases of the Mayor’s Court of New York City, 1674–1784 (Washington, D.C., 1935), 52–54.
2. “Agreement of the Bar of New York Entered into October of 1756,” printed in , 160–61.