Law Schools

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, legal education in North Carolina was a haphazard undertaking. A young [3]law student studied on his own or under the tutelage of a licensed lawyer, reading books owned by an attorney and picking up information from his mentor. Such noteworthy early attorneys and public figures as Thomas Ruffin [4], David L. Swain [5], Robert Strange [6], William Gaston [7], David F. Caldwell, and Archibald D. Murphey [8] instructed students in their offices.

In due time, private law schools were organized. The first to be advertised was that of John Louis Taylor [9], whose school opened in Raleigh [10]in 1822. Other private schools were conducted by outstanding lawyers such as Murphey [11], Leonard Henderson [12], and Frederick Nash [13]. Two teachers of note were Richmond M. Pearson [14], who had law schools in Mocksville and later at Richmond Hill, and William Horn Battle [15] of Chapel Hill. Battle's was the first law school to be affiliated with an established institution of higher learning. He and James Iredell Jr. had taught law in Raleigh [10] in 1841, prior to Battle's 1843 move to Chapel Hill. In Chapel Hill he began teaching in his office; by 1845 he was professor of law at the University of North Carolina [16]. The university offered the bachelor of law degree beginning at that time.

Four other university-level law schools were subsequently established in North Carolina, forever replacing the small private schools of the antebellum period [17]. Wake Forest University [18]'s School of Law was established in 1894. Duke University [19] was founded in 1924, and immediate efforts to provide legal education led to the establishment of a law school in 1930. Trinity College [20], out of which Duke University grew, had offered an undergraduate class in law in 1868 and set up a school of law in 1904. Raleigh's Shaw University [21] established a law school for African American [22] students in 1888, but it was closed in 1914. North Carolina Central University [23]'s School of Law was opened in 1939. It immediately closed for lack of students but reopened the next year and continues to operate successfully. Finally, Campbell University [24] established a law school in 1976.

Image Credit:

Duke School of Law Library, 10 April 1949. Image courtesy of Duke University Archives. Durham, North Carolina, USA. Available from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dukeyearlook/5670048483/ [3] (accessed September 11, 2012).