Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America
| Author | : Philip Girard |
| Publisher | : University of Toronto Press |
| Total Pages | : 297 |
| Release | : 2011-01-01 |
| ISBN-10 | : 9781442644106 |
| ISBN-13 | : 1442644109 |
| Rating | : 4/5 (06 Downloads) |
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.
