Lawyers and legal culture in British North America
Subtitle: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax
By: Philip Girard
Contributors: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
Publisher: Published for the Osgoode Society for Legal History by University of Toronto Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 279
ISBN-13: 9781442644106
Subjects: Avocats; Practice of law; Lawyers; Pratique; Biographies; Histoire; Droit; Biography; History
Description: "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."--Pub. desc.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.