Ka Leo O H.A.L.A., 18:3, Fall 1995

LEGAL LONDON WALKING TOUR
Laura Warfield

    I was fortunate enough to spend a week in London this summer, and when I spied a listing for a walking tour of "Legal London," I thought it was my duty as a paralegal and as a member of the HALA newsletter committee to investigate. So, at great personal sacrifice (I mean it, I had a really bad cold, so bad that I had to walk around with a bottle of water and some cough suppressants in readiness for my hourly coughing fit, not to mention the packets of Kleenex, and it was freezing cold outside, this being London in mid-June) I found a stationery store, bought a steno notebook, and headed out for a two-hour walking tour of the legal quarter of London. Perhaps I should add that I hoped to see some of the places featured in the works of nineteenth-century novelist Charles Dickens (especially Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend).

    We (tourists and tour guide) gathered at the entrance to the Holborn underground station. Most of us were Americans; a few were British, and a couple German. Two young Americans were clearly law students. The one thing we all seemed to have in common was that we had each read, or watched, Rumpole of the Bailey. Our guide was David, a Midwestern farmer's son (yes, that's the American Midwest I'm talking about). He apologized for his lack of an English accent (which was disappointing, I must admit, but the only disappointment of the tour); it wasn't clear how our Midwestern guide ended up in London doing walking tours, but he did at some point say that he was a literary historian by training and a journalist by profession.

    It could be that a little background information is in order here. In England, there are solicitors and barristers. Traditionally, solicitors have included all the non-litigation kinds of lawyers, as well as lawyers who prepare lawsuits for trial; until recently, solicitors were not allowed to practice before the bar (appear in court). Barristers, on the other hand, are trial lawyers; traditionally, only a barrister could come before the bar. However, recent judicial reforms have permitted solicitors to practice in certain--but not all--courts. Barristers, of course, (and presumably, solicitors too) must wear a wig and gown when they appear in court. Clients do not hire barristers directly; the client engages a solicitor, who engages the barrister if necessary. There are different educational paths for solicitors and barristers. In order to practice as a barrister, one must be a member of one of the Inns of Court.

    The Inns of Court are only roughly equivalent to a bar association. There are four of them: Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn and the Inns of Temple (Inner Temple and Middle Temple). These venerable institutions are so venerable that it is unclear exactly how or when they began (although we do know it was four or five centuries ago). Physically, they look like the best college campuses, with lovely old buildings, quaint courtyards, and soothing green squares. They contain assembly halls, dining halls, law libraries, chapels, and barristers’ offices ("chambers").

    The "Legal London" we were to see was basically the section of London in which the Inns of Court, the Royal Courts of Justice, and so on, are situated.

    Our first stop was Lincoln's Inn Fields, the second oldest square in London (1640), once a haven for the criminal element: an eighteenth-century act of parliament described Lincoln's Inn Fields as "a receptacle of all known forms of nastiness" (or something like that). More on Lincoln’s Inn later--for the moment, our stop at Lincoln’s Inn Fields was just an excuse for our guide to talk about Charles Dickens. Among the noteworthy buildings on the square is No. 58, a mirror-image copy of the house next door (No. 57). A close friend of Dickens, John Forster, who was a non-practicing member of the Inner Temple, lived at No. 58. (Dickens left his papers to Forster, who wrote a biography of Dickens, presumably based on those papers). No. 58 was the inspiration for attorney Tulkinghorn's house in Bleak House.

    Our guide went on to tell us that Charles Dickens sired eleven children, all boys except two. The baby of the family, Henry Fielding Dickens, became an eminent lawyer, and eventually a judge. There is a story that an "old lag" (a repeat offender), appearing as a defendant before Judge Dickens, said, when asked if he had anything to tell the court, "I've read your father's books and you're not a patch on him!" (i.e., you’re nothing compared to him). Judge Dickens responded by sentencing the defendant to eighteen months in which to continue his studies. (The eighteenth-century novelist Henry Fielding, after whom Judge Dickens was named, was a magistrate as well as a novelist, and, along with his blind brother--also a magistrate--he founded the Bow Street Runners, the original police detectives.)

    Next we saw the Royal Courts of Justice, a huge, gorgeous, gothic-revival building (1871-82) housing the civil courts as well as the criminal appeals bench. (The lower criminal court, Central Criminal Court--the Old Bailey, where Horace Rumpole argues his cases--is in another neighborhood altogether.) The Royal Courts of Justice, like our courts, are open to the public, but we didn’t go in. (There was no time to lose: we had lots of ground to cover!)

    Instead we crossed the street and ducked through an arched passageway into the precincts of the Inns of Temple. There are two Inns of Temple: Inner Temple and Middle Temple. The name comes from the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages, who had an establishment there. The Knights Templar were a military/religious order of knights/monks whose purpose was to defend the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem from the infidel. The Templars' church, built in the twelfth century, and then added to in the thirteenth, is still standing, although it was badly bombed in World War II, so much of it is a restoration. The Templars lost their land in the early fourteenth century, as part of the Crown’s successful campaign to oust them from Britain. Eventually the land was leased to lawyers, who rented chambers to law students, beginning what became the Inns of Temple. (The Inns acquired the "fee" from the Crown in the sixteenth century.)

    The "inner" in Inner Temple means toward the city center; there is now an office building on the land which was to become the Outer Temple. The Inner Temple and Middle Temple buildings are a little mixed together, but you can always tell which buildings belong to which Inn: the Inner Temple buildings are all marked with a little winged horse, the Middle Temple buildings with a lamb and flag device.

    We went into the quiet fountain court (featured in Dickens's Our Mutual Friend) and then into the Middle Temple gardens, in which roses were blooming (despite the cold). Middle Temple Hall (1574) is the only building still standing in which one of Shakespeare's plays was performed, by his company, while he was still alive (it was Twelfth Night, performed on February 2, 1602; Queen Elizabeth I attended the performance). Several signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of Middle Temple.

    While within the precincts of Middle Temple, we peered into the window of one of the chambers. Along with the usual office accoutrements, including computer equipment--not very Dickensian--we could see documents which looked like court filings tied with red (well, dark pink) ribbon. It is this traditional manner of binding legal documents that gives us the expression "red tape."

    Next we passed into the Fig Tree Court, which is still lit by gas lamps. Until about eight years ago, the lamps were lit every night, and extinguished every morning, by a gas lamplighter, who would lean his ladder against each lamp, and climb up to light or put out the gas. When he died automatic timers were installed, but the lamps are still gas and not electric.

    Barristers do not work in law firms as Americans know them. Barristers are self-employed; they are not permitted to go into partnership. They share offices ("chambers"); the clerk of chambers is the channel through which cases ("briefs") come from solicitors. A barrister must be a member of one of the Inns of Court, and he or she must also be accepted into a particular chambers within that Inn of Court.

    On the doorways of the chambers are white signboards with the barristers' names painted on them in black, in order of seniority (of course). Women's names are noticeably absent from the more senior reaches of these listings--women were first permitted to be called to the Bar in 1919--and even today, our guide told us, women account for less than 10% of barristers (and less than 10% of solicitors).

    At this point in our tour I spied a man in a navy pinstripe suit, carrying what we call a litigation bag (and they call a "circuit case") and also a sack of maroon cloth, with a thick maroon drawstring, which, I deduced (or perhaps I imagined) was the bag in which the robe and wig of a barrister are carried to and from court.

    On our way out of the Temple grounds, we passed by "Dr. Johnson's Building 1," off Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, where we paused to examine a chambers directory featuring the name of Mr. John Mortimer, Q.C. (the author of the Rumpole stories, among many other things). Dr. Johnson, of course, is the eighteenth-century compiler of one of the earliest comprehensive English dictionaries.

    We then walked past the headquarters of The Law Society, which is the solicitors' umbrella organization (as a barrister is a member of an Inn of Court, so a solicitor is a member of the Law Society). The Law Society is more analogous to the American Bar Association than are the Inns of Court.

The building containing the bankruptcy court is on Carey Street, and gives us (or at least, gives nineteenth-century novelists) the expression "to be in Carey Street," or its corruption "to be in Queer Street," meaning to be bankrupt.

    On Carey Street we passed a copy shop called "Legalstat," and through the window I saw those familiar--perhaps ubiquitous--tabbed binders, piled five-high, on the floor--waiting to be copied or perhaps delivered. The employees looked just as harried as copy operators do here. Hurrying down the street in front of the shop was a woman in a suit and high heels, with no coat (remember, it was freezing out), and with her hands overflowing with candy bars--obviously on an errand of mercy for benefit of co-workers suffering a mid-afternoon sugar low.

    Chancery Lane links the four Inns of Court. The name "Chancery Lane" is said to be a corruption of "Lord Chancellor's Lane"; the Lord Chancellor is the head of the judiciary in England. In Chancery Lane is the Public Records Office (in this location since the fourteenth century). The present building, another imposing Gothic Revival monument (1851-66), has a very interesting museum, we were told. Unfortunately, the Public Records Office will soon be moving to another location, less picturesque but more practical.

    Also in Chancery Lane is Ede & Ravenscroft, makers of wigs and gowns for barristers. From time to time efforts have been made to get rid of the wig and gown: a few years ago a vote was taken among barristers, but most preferred to keep the wig and gown, perhaps because they function essentially as a uniform. One can tell whether a barrister is fully-qualified or still in training (in his or her "year's pupillage") from the gown; fully-qualified barristers have a pocket on the back of the gown, trainees do not. Once upon a time the grateful client would slip his payment into the pocket on the back of the barrister's gown--the pocket being in the back because the barrister performs to the best of his ability no matter the amount of the fee. (Barristers in their year's pupillage, of course, don't get paid.) Although this is no longer the way barristers get paid (if it ever was) the symbolism is still considered appropriate.

    Next came Lincoln's Inn, which gets its name from the Earl of Lincoln, who owned the land which was the first site of the Inn, in the 1280s. (Lincoln’s Inn was not at its present location until the fifteenth century.) Notable member of Lincoln's Inn include Sir Thomas Moore and Margaret Thatcher; many of the Treasurers (heads) of Lincoln's Inn have been Prime Ministers.

    Members of Lincoln's Inn enjoy the rare privilege of toasting the monarch while remaining seated. It seems that King Charles II (who was rather a "merrie monarch") was drinking with the then Treasurer of Lincoln's Inn (sometime in the seventeenth century). The Treasurer wanted to toast the King, but was too drunk to stand up, whereupon the King granted members of Lincoln's Inn the privilege of toasting the monarch sitting down. Only the Royal Navy shares this privilege (to stand up for a toast in the cramped quarters of an old-fashioned ship was to risk head injury). And speaking of toasting, it is a New Year's tradition among Lincoln's Inn members to toast the first layman in the New Year who writes his own will--or so it is said.

    The seventeenth-century Chapel of Lincoln’s Inn has an undercroft (a kind of open arcade, on street level, beneath the chapel proper) which provided a place for law students to get exercise and fresh air despite London's rainy weather. The undercroft was once a favorite place to abandon unwanted infants, who would be raised by Lincoln’s Inn, and given the surname Lincoln.

    Charles Dickens worked as a clerk for the solicitor Charles Molloy, whose offices were in one of the buildings in Lincoln’s Inn New Square (built 1685). Curious to know exactly what my favorite author’s work in the legal field entailed, I checked Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Dickens. Both for Charles Molloy, and for the solicitors’ firm of Ellis & Blackmore, for which he worked before Molloy, Dickens was a "writing clerk," responsible for copying documents (i.e., making handwritten copies of handwritten documents) and running errands to lawyers’ offices, the courts, and government offices (like the Alienation Office, the Sixpenny Receivers Office, the Clerk of the Escheats, the Dispensation Office, the Affidavit Office, or the Six-Clerk’s Office). While Dickens was working for these solicitors, he was also studying shorthand, and he soon became a court reporter--for a while. (Document clerks, messengers and court reporters take heart--there is no predicting what fame and fortune await you!)

    The red brick Lincoln's Inn Old Hall (built 1490-92) was the setting for the endless hearings in Jarndyce and Jarndyce (in Dickens’s Bleak House). This fictional lawsuit in the Court of Chancery drags on and on, ruining the lives and hopes of one generation after another, until the estate which is the subject of the proceedings is entirely used up in attorneys’ fees and court costs. (Ironically, Dickens’s own estate was the subject of proceedings in Chancery.)

    As a student, Oliver Cromwell, leader of the seventeenth-century Puritan Revolution, and eventually Lord Protector of the Realm, had chambers in the Lincoln’s Inn Gatehouse. (The present structure is a modern rebuilding of the original 1564 gatehouse, although the gates themselves are the original ones.)

    As well as the Inns of Court, there were once nine Inns of Chancery: law students would begin their training at an Inn of Chancery and then go on to one of the Inns of Court. (This is no longer the case.) Staple Inn is the only one of the Inns of Chancery still physically in existence, though it is now the Institute of Actuaries, and the present buildings are mostly reconstructed (having been bombed in 1944).

    Gray's Inn is the northernmost of the Inns of Court; in the sixteenth century it was the largest of them. Unfortunately, much of it--including the law library--was destroyed in World War II; what we see now is almost all reconstructed. (Donations from the American Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association, among others, helped fund the rebuilding.) The one building in Gray's Inn that survived the Blitz happens to be one in which Charles Dickens first worked as a solicitors’ clerk (for Ellis & Blackmore).

    Gray's Inn is full of history: Winston Churchill first met Franklin Roosevelt here; the first performance of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors took place here. Sir Francis Bacon was a Treasurer of Gray's Inn.

    LeGrey was the name of an eminent medieval legal family; it is assumed that this is where Gray's Inn gets its name. (Lady Jane Grey, decapitated by order of "Bloody Mary" Tudor, was of this family.)

    Our last stop was the Inns of Court School of Law (a boring modern building). A would-be barrister with a degree in law must take an additional year of study and then one year of pupillage; one with a degree in some other subject needs two years of study and then the one year of pupillage. A solicitor now must have a law degree, but once served an apprenticeship (was "under articles") instead.

    Our tour ended with a couple more anecdotes. It used to be the practice for barristers in need of work to sit in a section at the back of the courtroom, so that any defendant without a barrister when his or her case was called could retain one on the spot. These cases (or, to a barrister, briefs) were referred to as "dock briefs," and this practice gave rise to a number of tales. It seems that in one case, when the judge asked the defendant if he wanted a barrister, the defendant replied, "No, your honor, I'm going to tell the truth." In another such case, when asked if he wanted a barrister, the defendant answered, "Yes, sir, I want that one." "You can't have that one; he's prosecuting," said the judge. "Then I plead guilty," said the defendant.

    Our guide directed us to the nearest tube stations, and that was that. We all nodded goodbye to each other and went our separate ways. (And it was a good thing, too: I was nearly out of bottled water, running low on Kleenex, and starting to get writer’s cramp. All I could think about was how good a hot Cornish pastie and a warm beer would taste.)

    The tour I took was "Legal London - the Inns of Court," one of the tours by the London Walks firm. It costs four pounds (about five dollars), takes about two hours, and is given Mondays at 2:00 p.m. and Wednesdays at 11:00 a.m., beginning at the entrance to the Holborn underground station. The London Walks brochure can be picked up anywhere in London, or you can contact London Walks at P.O. Box 1708, London MW6 4LW, tel. (0171) 624-3978, fax (0171) 625-1932.

    There is at least one other legal walking tour of London. Time Out magazine (which covers what's going on in London for the week) lists a tour called "The Innocent and the Guilty - Legal London," which meets Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m., also at the Holborn tube (for information call 0895 639289).

    And, for do-it-yourself types, there is an excellent guidebook to legal London, Fleet Street, Holborn & the Inns of Court, by Roger Hudson (Haggerston Press, London, 1995), one in the London Guides series (obtainable at any good bookstore in London), which, though compact, is much more comprehensive than a two-hour walking tour could hope to be.