Talk:Litchfield Law School

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[edit] Really?

I'm twelfth-generation Connecticut Yankee and proud of my state. But both as a former historian and as a lawyer I know that a distinction must be drawn between "reading law" (a would-be lawyer clerks for a lawyer, who instructs him formally and informally: a sort of apprenticeship) and attendance at a formal law school. As there's general agreement that, before the mid 1780s, Tapping Reeve only took in law clerks, not instructing young men who paid him tuition and did not work for him, it's not honest for us to claim that the eventual institution in Litchfield was America's first law school. That honor properly belongs to William & Mary, which established formal instruction in law in 1779. Firstorm (talk) 23:59, 24 May 2008 (UTC)