Lawyers after 1790 were members of a growing and powerful profession. As the American economy grew and became more complex, so did the law. New England lawyers faced new challenges in solving the problems of commerce and advocating for economic development. Like their city counterparts, country lawyers spent much of their time collecting debts for storekeepers and other prosperous citizens, and drawing up leases and mortgages, property deeds, contracts, and partnerships in trade.

Rural lawyers also represented their clients at informal local courts. They argued minor cases before lay justices of the peace, men of local importance who did not usually have legal training. Four times a year they could take cases to the sessions of the much more formal Court of Common Pleas at the county seat. These court times were often social occasions as well, when lawyers socialized with fellow members of the profession from all over the state. Occasionally a country lawyer might take a case before the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.

Country lawyers worked in small free-standing offices like this one, built for John McClellan of Woodstock, Connecticut, or in rooms in their homes. Here they met clients, drafted legal documents, and prepared their cases. Most of the lawyers practicing in the early 19th century had joined the bar after a three-year apprenticeship in an established practitioner’s office, copying documents and reading the classic works of the common law. But by 1830 law schools—particularly Harvard, which had been endowed and enlarged—were emerging as a serious alternative to the old system