Q: How Did the Shire Train its Lawyers?
ANSWER: To the best of my knowledge J.R.R. Tolkien never wrote anything about how the Hobbits of the Shire trained their lawyers. However, given the complete lack of reference to anything like formal schools in the Shire I think it unlikely there was a special Hobbit college or university anywhere in Middle-earth. I think it more likely that Tolkien envisioned the Hobbits training their loremasters and scholars after the ancient custom of a master taking on pupils or disciples, a practice that arose in ancient antiquity and which has, to some extent, survived even down to modern times.
Hobbit Lawyers would have required certain skills, to be sure. First, they would have to be literate. Second, they would have to have a knowledge of the set of laws that were observed in the Shire. There is no reason to suppose these laws could not have been set down in books of some sort, but Tolkien did write in The Prologue:
Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea. Of their original home the Hobbits in Bilbo’s time preserved no knowledge. A love of learning (other than genealogical lore) was far from general among them, but there remained still a few in the older families who studied their own books, and even gathered reports of old times and distant lands from Elves, Dwarves, and Men. Their own records began only after the settlement of the Shire, and their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their Wandering Days….
The only lawyers who are mentioned by name are Messrs. Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes — the partners who handled the auction of Bag End and Bilbo’s effects; although technically J.R.R. Tolkien never uses the words “lawyers” or “attorneys” in referring to them. The Grubb family was one of the Shire’s wealthier families and Bilbo had many relatives among the Grubbs. The Burrowes were another wealthy family, according to Letter No. 25 (written in 1938).
Rather than call these specialists “lawyers” or “attorneys” it may be more appropriate to think of them as loremasters or experts among the Hobbits in matters of law and custom; and as such their advice and services would have undoubtedly been sought by all the wealthy families among Hobbits. They may have been called upon to settle legal disputes in local moots, acting as judges, prosecutors, and perhaps even counselors for the defense in important decisions.
Tolkien’s use of the moot in various stories (such as the Entmoot that Merry and Pippin witness, and the Folkmoot at which Hurin is tried in Brethil) serves as a convenient explanation for how many different societies handled complex matters of law. This kind of grass roots democracy would, in fact, have been common throughout the primitive world before civilization arose. Laws and tribal customs only became important as more and more communities interacted with each other and worked together.
One can therefore imagine a young Shire hobbit from a wealthy family seeking out one of the masters of law to serve as his aide and apprentice for a period of years. Such an apprenticeship would have to include learning how to read and write, studying all available sources on law (which might include only a small number of books) and history, and probably spending a lot of time analyzing and editing legal documents, perhaps even preparing them under the close eye of their mentors.
It might be a privileged generation among the hobbits who saw a significant legal debate over points of law. In fact, Tolkien only seems to have alluded to one such debate concerning inheritances in Letter No. 214, where he wrote:
The Baggins headship then, owing to the strange events, fell into doubt. Otho Sackville-Baggins was heir to this title – quite apart from questions of property that would have arisen if his cousin Bilbo had died intestate; but after the legal fiasco of 1342 (when Bilbo returned alive after being ‘presumed dead’) no one dared to presume his death again. Otho died in 1412, his son Lotho was murdered in 1419, and his wife Lobelia died in 1420. When Master Samwise reported the ‘departure over Sea’ of Bilbo (and Frodo) in 1421, it was still held impossible to presume death; and when Master Samwise became Mayor in 1427, a rule was made that: ‘if any inhabitant of the Shire shall pass over Sea in the presence of a reliable witness, with the expressed intention not to return, or in circumstances plainly implying such an intention, he or she shall be deemed to have relinquished all titles rights or properties previously held or occupied, and the heir or heirs thereof shall forthwith enter into possession of these titles, rights, or properties, as is directed by stablished custom, or by the will and disposition of the departed, as the case may require.’ Presumably the title of ‘head’ then passed to the descendants of Ponto Baggins — probably Ponto (II).
It is significant that Sam was able (apparently) to compel the shaping of this legal decision after he became Mayor of Michel Delving/the Shire (6 years after the departure of Bilbo and Frodo, but 5 years before Merry becomes Master of Buckland and 7 years before Pippin becomes the Took). Sam must have been held in the highest esteem by the Thain (Paladin, Pippin’s father), who almost certainly convened a Shire Moot to sort out the questions raised by Bilbo and Frodo’s departure.
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