Like all other trades, professions and livelihoods, the legal profession has its own terminology. Although many of the expressions used below have ceased to be used today, many also continue in use. They all have their origin in the usage of the English Courts and/or Barristers' Inns. In alphabetical order:

Benchers / Bencher: The board of directors / an individual director of The Law Society of Upper Canada.

Term: A period of time into which the court's year is divided or the sessions of the court within such period, some separated by an interval called a vacation. The early courts in what is now Ontario had four terms each year: Hillary (winter, the start of a new calendar year), Easter (spring), Trinity (summer) and Michaelmas (fall, starting in the latter part of September). Sessions were not held during much of the summer and as late as the 1970's the early summertime was "Long Vacation".

Student-at-law: A law student under articles. In the "old" days there was an admissions test by The Law Society and a healthy, in relative terms, fee to be paid to it, before the student embarked upon his legal education at which time he became a student-at-law. Today, at least two years of university is required before admission to law school. After an LLB is obtained articling is required. Then follows the Bar Admission Course. During articles the student now is described as an "articling student".

The Law Society of Upper Canada: The lawyer's governing body in Ontario incorporated in 1797 in the British Colony of the Province of Upper Canada, which today is in everything but name the Law Society of Ontario.

Principal: The practicing lawyer by whom the articling student is employed.

Treasurer: The president of the "board of directors", the head of The Law Society of Upper Canada. "Treasurer" having its origin, historically, as the result of, "long ago", the person who headed an organization having the responsibility to personally keep its money for the organization's use.

David Tisdale attended Common School at "Kitchen's", in Charlotteville, then the Forestville school, followed by the St. Williams School in Walsingham, then in Vittoria. He subsequently attended and completed Simcoe Grammar School. He began his study of law in 1852, clerking in the offices of G.R. VanNorman in Simcoe. He passed his entrance examinations and was admitted as a student-at-law in Trinity (spring) Term 1853 placing himself under articles to D.B. Read, K.C. During the time he was a student, before his call to the Bar in 1858, a number of changes took place in the requisite training of a lawyer.

Since 1828 four visits to Toronto over five years, each visit for roughly two weeks, had been required to observe the courts in term. The rest of one's training could be summarized in the widely held belief that to be a lawyer you had to be a gentleman, that gentlemen had to take responsibility for their own education and that the privilege of practicing could only be attained by experiencing legal practice itself.

The main objective of the Law Society of Upper Canada, from its formation in 1797, was to establish and regulate admission to the profession. Thereafter the society following some initial skirmishes with the colony's legislature, gained sole control of admission standards and thus of legal education and became the sole arbiter of the manner in which one became a lawyer in Upper Canada. From the beginning in 1797 and thereafter to the mid-19^th century when David Tisdale began his legal education and for a long time following, "the examination of students remained the heart of the society's work". Christopher Moore, The Law Society of Upper Canada, 113.

In 1842, the society hired a new secretary and librarian who was also to act as examiner, a function that had been exercised previously by the benchers themselves.

Hugh Nelson Gwynn remained at Osgoode Hall as secretary, librarian, and examiner for thirty years. Until 1872 when he died in his bachelor quarters in the east wing, he was a 'lion in the way of applicants for admission to the society'. Wearing an academic gown and wig and tossing off Shakespearean references and Latin tags in a high treble voice, he terrified a generation of students, genially 'plucking' - that is, failing - any who deviated even momentarily from his Olympian standards of knowledge and deportment. 'A pretty good pluck today, Molloy,' he is recalled as saying to the Osgoode steward when a large crowd of applicants appeared, ' a pretty good pluck, there are lots of them. Ibid, 113.

Far from all prospective lawyers had a youthful life of gentlemanly study to prepare for the entrance examinations. Not everyone could afford or otherwise have the opportunity of attending a private school or, much less, the colleges, the fore-runners of Ontario's early universities, which appeared in the 1840's. In 1851 at age seventeen, David Tisdale was living at his parents' home in Charlotteville Township and teaching; by the fall of that year he had earned a third-class teaching certificate. A farmer's son such as he would continue to tutor himself in Latin and geometry for the society's entrance exam while working as a clerk.

Once admitted as a student barrister, he had to find time in a six day work week for reading carefully, making notes and reviewing them from time-to-time, struggling to master Blackstone, Stephens on Pleading, Chitty on Contracts, and other authorities. Many law students received little assistance from their principals who kept them busy copying documents, filing pleas, and handling routine office business. He may even have bent the rules by continuing to privately teach or tutor. Certainly it is known that to support themselves and to obtain money to pay the fees required by the Law Society, others taught and at least one recorded in his diary working as a school superintendent.

In 1854, the year after David Tisdale's admission to articles, not only did every student lawyer over his five years of apprenticeship have to attend in Toronto during four terms to observe the workings of the court but he also became required to take a morning lecture each of the twelve working days of those terms.

The lectures were a minor concession to the advocates of schoolroom legal education. Ability to pass the examinations, rather than classroom hours, remained the essential criterion of entry to the profession. Christopher Moore, Ibid 116.

David Tisdale was called to the bar during Michaelmas Term (fall) in 1858. Subsequently in 1861, the compulsory lectures during term were supplemented by voluntary out-of-term lectures, attendance at which provided a way for the time of apprenticeship to be shortened. There seems to have been a price to be paid, though, as some exams became required during the apprenticeship and apparently so whether or not the additional lectures were taken.

In 1868, some ten years after David Tisdale had been called to the bar, as the court system evolved throughout Ontario and the courts could be observed elsewhere, term keeping ended and consequently, so did the compulsory and subsequently, the voluntary lectures. Thus ended what can now be looked at as the first law school. Although it could not be said to be ephemeral, it did only last fourteen years until it succumbed, but life, in the form of legal education, went on.

W. Edgett Tisdale received his early training in Simcoe public and high schools. In 1881 about six months after his 17th birthday, he was admitted as a student-at-law in Michaelmas (Fall) Term. He studied law while at his father's firm, Tisdale & Robb, Simcoe, and subsequently with the Toronto firm of MacCarthy, Osler & Company. He was admitted to the bar at the beginning of Hilary Term (early January), 1889.

In 1881 other than in Ontario, a university education had become or was about to become the prerequisite to a legal career. In Quebec where the study of the civil code had always been a function of academic study, both Laval and McGill opened law schools over thirty years earlier in 1848. Prospective lawyers from the Maritime Provinces either studied in Ontario in accordance with what the Law Society prescribed or in increasing numbers went to the eastern United States. A three year post-graduate LLB program had been established at Harvard in 1870. Other American university law schools followed in the Ivy League and elsewhere. Dalhousie Law School was opened in Nova Scotia in 1883. Still, at that time, that school differed from the U.S. model as courses were largely led by lawyers rather than academics and articling was still required. In 1892 the St. John Law School was established in New Brunswick. As the Canadian west developed, the lawyers in great part coming from Ontario, the western legal profession ceded education to the universities, the earliest law school being that of the University of Manitoba which was established in 1885. There too, articles were required but a degree in law lessened the length of articles by two years.

But in Ontario, W.E. Tisdale entered upon his formal legal training in much the same way as had his father. He was one of the last to exercise the gentlemanly tradition of self-reliance. In 1881 you could obtain a law school degree but it conferred no reduction in the length of articles nor could one avoid the passing of the required exams for admission as a student or admission to practice. Still, the belief in the legitimacy of self-reliance was fading and in 1889, in the autumn of the year David Tisdale's son was called to the bar, the Law Society opened its own law school.

Throughout North America in the late nineteenth century, the new ideas of professionalism supported arguments that lawyers needed a more formal and more 'scientific' education. Almost everywhere, this led to close cooperation with universities, and universities gradually made the three-year LLB degree program the professional norm. But the remade professions of the late nineteenth century cherished autonomy as much as learnedness, and the belief that lawyers should also be scholars was old but far from extinct. In Ontario, where the profession had the resources to pursue its own initiatives in legal education, running its own school could be an opportunity for professional pride, not embarrassment. The Law Society founded its own law school, not out of hostility to universities, 'but to maintain the legal profession's autonomy over legal education and to justify its claim to general professional autonomy.' Christopher Moore, The Law Society of Upper Canada, 169.

This school provided its own blend of education and practical training. Having a university degree reduced the term of articles to three years. Without a degree articles were over five years and the law school was attended over the last three years. In either case the three years of law school consisted of a combination of early morning and late afternoon lectures from September to April with the remaXninw time spent in employment.

Throughout W. Edgett Tisdale's period of articles the use of his time must have been similar to that recorded in the diary of Robert McLaughlin, who articled over almost exactly the same period of time. His diary records 'spent day in the office … evening studying law', drawing chancery papers, making bills of costs, searching the whole town for a will, doing a chattel mortgage and a lease, taking instructions for suit and 'also cut wood'. He appeared in lesser courts and observed in those courts in which only a lawyer could practice. He kept the firm's books and chased the firm's clients for payment.

He was probably not paid … but it was understood as a student-at-law, he had been accepted among the town's leaders. When another local lawyer departed to practice elsewhere, McLaughlin attended a farewell banquet where 'there were about forty present of the elite of the town.' McLaughlin swam, canoed, and joined boating parties all summer, went sleighing and joined card parties in the winter and flirted decorously with appropriate young women all year … Amid this busy public life, McLaughlin devoted himself to private study … devoted anguished efforts to the debates of (a local political) Association … (and) honed the advocacy skills and command of public business a lawyer needed. Ibid, 163.

When D.E.W. "Teak" Tisdale was admitted as a student-at-law on August 27, 1927 it was into a system based on the methods and beliefs of the law school established almost forty years earlier in 1889, the year of the call to the bar of his father, W. Edgett Tisdale. By this time, elsewhere than in Ontario the universities had solidified their role as the sole source of a legal education.

The post-WWI benchers and those of the 1920's have been described as the "heirs of the innovative movement around 1890 when the idea that the profession could run its own law school had been fresh and progressive and idealistic … and that responsibility for education was an essential aspect of self-government". Christopher Moore, The Law Society of Upper Canada, 113.

Still, those among them seeking change were of two opinions: those who thought a university education should supplant that then provided by the law school and those who believed that improving both the school's curriculum and enhancing articling should prevail. The end result in 1923 was an improvement in course content and the method of delivery. As well the lectures were all to be in the morning rather than bracketing the student's workday. Essentially the old system, now "new and improved" continued. One further development was that the school, which had never had an official name, was formally named Osgoode Hall Law School.

Teak Tisdale was admitted as a matriculate student, that is to say he had completed senior matriculation (later called grade 13) at high school. All his early education was in Simcoe, public school at Central School and high school at Simcoe High School. He had with respect to his legal education, "squeaked in under the wire"; that fall convocation prescribed two years of university the minimum requirement for future admissions. As a matriculate student his articles would last a minimum of five years. For that duration he articled in Toronto with Arthur.G. Slaght who had himself grown up in Simcoe, the son of T.R. (Thomas Rollo) Slaght who from 1901 to 1921 was the Crown Attorney of the County of Norfolk. Arthur Slaght would go on to become a twice elected member of the House of Commons. On September 15, 1932 at twenty-four years of age, just a month and a half short of his 25th birthday, Teak Tisdale was called to the Bar.

Following the academic changes introduced in 1923 a concerted effort was made by the then Dean, John D. Falconbridge, to encourage a more cohesive student body. The student society, then named the Osgoode Hall Literary and Athletic Society, was revived. Basketball, tennis and hockey were played by teams representing the school. Student dances and dinners took place and a student newspaper named Obiter Dicta began publishing in 1927.

Although it is not featured in the records of the Law Society nor those of its school, Osgoode Inn (Toronto) of the International Legal Fraternity of Phi Delta Phi (FDF) was a vehicle of education and school spirit from the date of its being chartered in 1896. In 1931-1932 the fraternity historian proudly reported:

Under our esteemed Magister, "Teak" Tisdale, the social, legal and educational functions of our Inn have been carried out with great success. The keen interest taken by our graduates in the moot courts, lectures, tea dances and at-home, is indicative of their popularity … Scholastically, the present final year has always been headed by one of our brethern, and the results of the last examinations showed two others within the first five. All the important executive offices at the school were occupied this year, by our members and at the recent elections for next year, Brothers Latchford and Dignan, were swept into the offices of president and vice-president respectively … Brothers Hulse, Yates and Cooke were members of the debating team which won the debating championship for Osgoode … and not the least interesting of achievements was the acquisition of a brand-new car by our genial brother, "Bill" Moss, upon a capital expenditure of twenty-five cents. "Bill" ingeniously purchased the winning ticket in a charity lottery. "Letters from the Inns - Osgoode (Toronto)", The Brief, Vol. 31, No. 3, (Fulton, Missouri, The International Legal Fraternity of Phi Delta Phi, 1932), 183.

Law offices of the time were spare, even those of the leading city firms were characterized by drab, brown, linoleum floors. For the waiting client there were a few chairs or a bench near the door or outside in the hall. An individual office was the prerogative of the principal in a one-man firm and of the partners in anything larger. In a small office the secretaries, the students and the juniors would be commingled near the door or in a larger one, would be in the middle ringed by the partners' offices.

many articling students found that their daily duties included operating the letter press, an antique mechanical press that laboriously made ledger copies of the office's correspondence. Hours were rarely docketed, afternoon tea was observed in many practices, and partners' bridge at lunch was not unknown. On the other hand most law offices opened on Saturday mornings, and in some prominent firms, partners' wives were expected to arrive at midday to help clean the office. Christopher Moore, The Law Society of Upper Canada, 197.

Thus in unadorned surroundings, the law students who began their legal education in 1927 in the "roaring twenties", worked and studied their way into the great depression emerging in the midst of it in 1932 to the practice of law in which some prospered and in which some had great difficulty.

Generally, see: Christopher Moore, The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers, 1797 - 1997, (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1997).