Legal Profession in the Company's Court and Legal Practitioners Act, 1853

While the Supreme Court at Calcutta was busy enrolling English barristers under the Charter of 1774, the Company's own courts — the Sadar Diwani Adalats, running an entirely separate system this paper has already spent two modules describing — needed their own pleaders too. This topic is about how that separate side of the profession got organised, and about the one Act that finally let the two separate worlds of lawyers meet, if only halfway.

In two minutes

Bengal Regulation VII of 1793 created a regular legal profession for the Company's own courts for the first time, restricting enrolment to Hindus and Muslims before Bengal Regulation XXVII of 1814 opened it to any qualified person, and the Legal Practitioners Act, 1853 finally let Supreme Court barristers and attorneys plead in Company courts — without giving Indian practitioners any right to appear in the Supreme Court in return.

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