Scope
The data cover all lawyers – barristers, attorneys, solicitors and proctors – admitted to practise in Australian courts from 1815 (when the first admissions in Australia were made) to the end of 1945. Conveyancers and notaries public are out of scope, but in the period under review these roles were usually held by individuals who were admitted as attorneys or solicitors.
Types of lawyers
An individual becomes entitled to practise law by a formal ceremony (“admission to practise”) held in a State’s Supreme Court. Separate admission was required for each colony (and then each State) for the whole of the period under review. From 1903, a lawyer admitted to practise in any State could be registered with the High Court of Australia, which would give the practitioner the right to appear in all federal courts.
In New South Wales and Queensland, lawyers were admitted to practise in the respective Supreme Courts either as barristers (the so-called “upper branch” of the legal profession in England and some places that inherited English law) or as attorneys, solicitors and proctors (together the “lower branch”). In New South Wales and Queensland, some practitioners moved from one branch to the other, and occasionally a practitioner would change more than once. Each such change required the practitioner to be admitted again. In South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, with a small number of exceptions, all practitioners were admitted to practise in the Supreme Court as both solicitors (the exact title varying) and barristers.
Victoria had in place the same system as New South Wales and Queensland until 1892. In that year an Act of Parliament came into effect that fused the two branches of the legal profession and from then all practitioners were admitted as “barristers and solicitors” of the Supreme Court with the right to practise as both barristers and solicitors. However, the two branches continued to operate de facto separately, with nearly all lawyers choosing to practise as one or the other. In 1901 the Victorian Bar was established as an association for practitioners who chose the work exclusively as barristers.
In England, until the 1870s the lower branch was further divided into attorneys (who practised in courts of common law), solicitors (who practised in courts of equity) and proctors (who practised in several specialised courts, especially ecclesiastical and admiralty courts). In colonial Australia it was usual for a practitioner to be admitted as an “attorney, solicitor and proctor” to practise in the Supreme Court and lower courts of a colony. By early in the twentieth century in New South Wales and Queensland the title was changed to just “solicitor”, and that term was in general use in all States.
Sources
The principal sources I have used are the rolls of practitioners created by each Supreme Court and (for the period under review) usually now held by a State archive (rolls in Western Australia are still held by the Supreme Court).
For South Australia I used the listing of lawyers generously provided to me by Dr Peter Moore of Katoomba, New South Wales, which is derived from official records in that State. See also Peter Moore (editor), The Roll of Practitioners Admitted in the Supreme Court of South Australia 1837 to 1945 (2013)
For Tasmania I used the Roll of Australian Lawyers (Tasmania) on the website of the Supreme Court of Tasmania, and the roll of early legal practitioners also on that website.
I obtained names of lawyers who signed the Bar Roll of the Victorian Bar from Peter Yule, Vic Bar: A History of the Victorian Bar (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2021).