London's Legal System in 1900: Solicitors' Fees

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A frequent complaint of late years amongst London solicitors is, that their ranks are overcrowded; and, they ask, how, in these days of universal education, when any clerk can draw up a marriage settlement by copying out of a book; when really intelligent forms of wills can be purchased for a penny; when abstruse points of law can be solved by reference to handbooks, or - if the legal nut be too hard to crack in this manner - by addressing a query to some leading periodical, can any attorney wax rich by the ordinary exercise of his profession?

Considering that to become a solicitor costs, roughly speaking, over £1000, that five years have to be spent under articles, three stiff examinations to be passed (the final a most severe and searching one), it is probably easier to qualify for any other profession.

Yet fathers persist in putting their sons into this already overstocked business.

Popular imagination pictures the ordinary family lawyer as possessing a private fortune apart from his profession, and in addition to his general business, having some fat agency, either blown into his pocket by chance, or inherited from his predecessor; or, better still, the legacy of a complicated and prolonged bankruptcy matter; or a disputed will-case, whence come very pretty pickings, all the costs, though shorn of their original goodly proportions by taxation, coming out of the estate; in both cases expense being no object.

But, as a rule, the large fortunes we read of have been made under quite exceptional circumstances, and two instances will occur to any one acquainted with the facts.

One is that of Mr. Joseph Maynard of Coleman Street, who, many years ago being solicitor to the Eastern Counties' Railway, when a receiver was put in charge of the line, filed his unpaid balance of bill of costs to the tune of £80,000, so that he must have previously made a good thing out of it.

His will was proved at something not very far short of half a million.

The other is that of Mr. Charles K. Freshfield, also in an exceptional position as solicitor to the Bank of England, who left a fortune of a quarter of a million.

And it has been stated that the estates of forty-four solicitors between the years 1890 and 1895 gave an average of £117,000 each.

But these prizes in the profession are balanced by an enormous number of blanks, of which we hear nothing.

In these days, solicitors wisely adapt themselves to the altered conditions under which alone successful remunerative practice is possible.

A specialty is almost de rigueur.

Some go in for the lucrative criminal and private inquiry line, and the handling of detective cases which involves the reputations, if not the fortunes, of the highest in the land.

Others, retaining many of the old-fashioned ideas handed down from father to son, confine themselves to family business and the management of big estates, often representing the influence wielded by the nobility of the country, including important Church patronage.

Solicitors of this kind frequently act as co-trustees under marriage settlements, etc., which involve a lot of responsibility.

Some firms devote themselves almost exclusively to ecclesiastical business.

Many solicitors never go near the West-end, but deal entirely with the City and its commercial matters.

A few very large houses seem to have almost a monopoly of Parliamentary business and the drafting of railway bills, and are always located at Westminster.

There are solicitors whose names are to be looked for on the prospectuses of new companies, and they come to represent, perhaps, a dozen flourishing Limited Liability concerns.

A favoured few are the legal advisers of wealthy City companies and their charitable Trusts and Institutions, and wax fat and flourish accordingly.

Then we have the "patent" attorney, who has made the law relating to inventions the study of a lifetime.

Descending in the scale from the Belgravia to the Whitechapel of the profession, is the legal practitioner who will for a consideration undertake almost any kind of work, wholesome or otherwise, provided he receive payment, and can keep outside the meshes of the law.

Of the legitimate loan-negotiating lawyer I do not speak, as he is practically extinct; though the time was, when, if a squire desired to mortgage his property, he went as a matter of course to his family solicitor, who arranged the business for him.

But now, the large Land and Financial companies absorb this source of remuneration to the lawyer.

Next: The Legal System in 1900 London: Solicitors' Offices