Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America

Download or read book Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America written by Philip Girard and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning biographer Philip Girard, Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America is the first history of the legal profession in Canada to emphasize its cross-provincial similarities and its deep roots in the colonial period. Girard details how nineteenth-century British North American lawyers created a distinctive Canadian template for the profession by combining the strong collective governance of the English tradition with the high degree of creativity and client responsiveness characteristic of U.S. lawyers — a mix that forms the basis of the legal profession in Canada today. Girard provides a unique window on the interconnections between lawyers' roles as community leaders and as legal professionals. Centred on one pre-Confederation lawyer whose career epitomizes the trends of his day, Beamish Murdoch (1800-1876), Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America makes an important and compelling contribution to Canadian legal history.