Lawyers' London Tour: the Royal Courts of Justice & Inns of Court

You will hear how the Inns of Court in this small area of London, almost by accident, fostered the development of English Common Law, which spread around the world to the USA, India, Pakistan, Africa, and Australia. People who changed the world worked, lived, entertained, and were educated in the Medieval and Elizabethan Inns:

- Seven of the signatories to the American Declaration of Independence - Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, who owned 200 bespoke (made-to-measure) suits. - Mahatma Gandhi, who had to promise his mother that he would abstain from meat, alcohol, and women before he could enroll in the Inner Temple. - Helena Normanton, the first woman to enroll to become a barrister (1919), had to eat 70 dinners in Middle Temple to qualify as a lawyer - Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake are members of the Middle Temple. - Sir William Blackstone, who influenced common and criminal law in the USA and British Commonwealth, stated: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

The oldest building on the tour is the Knights Templar Church, built in 1162 AD, which was one of the bases for King John during the Magna Carta negotiations.