ABSTRACT
The importance of understanding legal culture and its influences has been much stressed in recent years. Legal education affects how a community of lawyers thinks about the law, its rules and practices, which sources they should use in constructing their arguments and ultimately the nature of the legal system in which they operate. This chapter provides context on legal culture, by equipping readers with an understanding of the men of law in one such town during the early modern period. It focuses on two branches of the legal profession within Aberdeen’s wider legal community, namely notaries and advocates. The chapter builds on existing scholarship and addresses gaps in the current understanding of local legal history, while also providing some context for the history of the local profession through comparison with the legal community based in Edinburgh.
