The ordinance of Edward I. authorised only students who had reached the rank of "apprentices at law" to practise as advocates in those courts in which the assistance of serjeants could not constantly ho obtained ; but as the practice of these courts increased, it was found necessary, in the reign of Elizabeth, to allow persons of less standing than apprentices to act both as advocates and as attorneys.
Students who, though not yet apprentices at law, had been admitted to argue fictitious cases at the mootinga in their respective inns of court, were allowed to practise as advocates in the ambulatory courts of common law and equity. Advocates of this third class were called utter-barristers, because in arguing their moot cases by way of pre paration for real forensic debates they were placed at the outer or uttermost end of the form on which they sat, and which was called the " barr." (Stow ; Waterhous; Dugdale ; Herbert, 'Antiq. Inns of Court,' 176.) The junior students, who sat in silence on the inside, were called inner-barristers, But the latter term has long been abandoned, and is sunk in the morn general designation of student; in consequence of which the term utter-barrister has also given place to that of barrister, and the student who is admitted to that degree is said to be " &tilled to the bar." This call however consists merely in the presiding bencher's saying, " I publish you a barrister of this Society." The mere students, formerly called inner-barristers, confine them selves to study, or, when they consider themselves qualified, practise as conveyancers, special pleaders, or equity draftsmen, in which capacity they are recognised by the legislature, being required to take out annual certificates from the stamp-office. For nearly the last forty years students pfactising as certificated special pleaders have been allowed to practise as advocates before judges sitting in their private chambers at Serjeants' Inn, for the summary despateh of matters of pleading and practice, &c.
Shortly after the permission given to barristers to practice as advo cates, we lose sight of the order of apprentices. Though usual, it was never perhaps absolutely necessary that a student should become an apprentice in order to qualify him for being called to the degree of the coif ; and when it ceased to be required as a title to practise as an advocate, there was no longer any motive for taking the degree of an apprentice.
The result of these inquiries seems to be, that'frem the Conquest to the 20 Edw. T. (1292), serjeant-countors were the only advocates; that from 1292 to the latter end of the I6th century, apprentices were allowed to practise in certain courts; that towards the close of the 16th century, the apprentices were supplanted by a more numerous class of junior students called utter-barristers and afterwards barristers ; and that from the middle of the 18th century, mere students were at any time after their admission, and immediately upon their admission, allowed to practise as certificated conveyancers or certificated special pleaders ; and that such special pleaders have latterly been allowed to practise as advocates before judges when administering justice in their private chambers ; which latter practice may be thus explained :—The business to be disposed of by the courts at Westminster having far outgrown the machinery provided fur its many acts of par liament have directed that certain judicial acts shall be done by the court or any judge thereof? The consequence of these provisions, and of a practice existing before, of referring minor questions and cases of a pressing nature to be disposed of by a single judge, has been that a most important part of the judicial business of the country, instead of being discussed as formerly in open court before a full bench, and with the assistance or in the presence of an intelligent bar, is commonly disposed of by a single judge in a private room, without any assistance except that which he can derive from the attorney's clerks on each side who attend the summons. It not unfrequently happens that a
most abstruse point of special pleading, involving the fate, and some times the real merits of the cause, and which in the reign of Edward VI.
would have been argued by learned serjeanta and sad apprentices at the bar, and afterwards debated publicly on the bench, is disposed of in five minutes, and without appeal, at chambers by a judge who has never practised this branch of the law, and who would when at the bar have shrunk from the responsibility of expressing an opinion on the most ordinary question connected with the science of special pleading. It was therefore quite natural that judges should be glad to avail themselves at chambers of the assistance of special pleaders ; and in order to prevent the abuse of the indiscriminate invitation given by the legislature to all persons, though students only of a day's standing, who are members of an inn of court, to take out licences to practise as special pleaders, &c., the benchcrs or governing members of some of the inns of court now require that upon the admission of a student, he shall engage not to practise as- a special pleader, &c., till he be of sufficient standing to be called to the bar.