Law Society’s Gazette, October 1951

The Compleat SollicitorWhen in 1653 Isaac Walton published his Compleat Angler he started a fashion. He had spent the years before the appearance of his classical guide to fishing and contemplation at his house at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street and it is not surprising therefore to find that the legal profession showed a special partiality for variants on his vademecum: The Compleat Sollicitor (1668), Compleat Clark (1671), Compleat Lawyer (1674) and Compleat Sherriff (1696).

The [Law Society’s library] contains several editions of The Compleat Sollicitor, including the first of 1668 from the press of James Cotterel. The full title of the work reveals that even three centuries ago it was thought desirable to encourage an intelligent interest, if not a constructive participation, in litigation on the part of the lay public. It (the book) was intended for the ‘Sollicitor teaching his Clyent to run through and manage his own business as well in His Majesties Superiour Courts at Westminster as in the Mayor’s Court, Court of Hustings and other Inferiour Courts.’

The Qualities of a SollicitorThe preface elaborates this purpose in the sonorous style of the period with a mixed collection of metaphors taken from travel by land and sea: ‘Safely to Conduct the Zealous Pilgrim through the sullen deserts and over the craggy precipices of the Herculean Voyage towards the intricate practice of the Laws Mysterys.’

Behind the author’s monotonous word play about the ‘solicitous solicitor’ and his ‘soliciting’, there is interesting material. Although official sanction for the term solicitor was two centuries away, the author of this work affirms that it is not enough to bear that name ‘superficially or historically’ or to be a ‘Loader to the Attorney or Intelligencer to the Clyent’; the practitioner ought ‘to be experienced in the rules, practice and procedure in the Court where his cause depends and in the management of it, both Offensive and Defensive’.

The writer appears to have sensed that few of his readers would stay the course of his long-drawn dissertation and creates an imaginary objector to inquire, ‘What need is there of all this coyl and ado? Do not all men know that there are many solicitors, humble fellows who have not wit or honesty enough to learn a mean Trade and in truth cannot write their own names, and yet are accounted brave fellows in that business?’

Our author had no difficulty in finding words strong enough to dismiss his objector if not to answer the objection: ‘Tis by means of these cheating devouring Caterpillars, such a company of simple sots, that honest sollicitors acquire a reputation for bribery and corruption.’