Office of Bar Counsel
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal |
| Citation | Vol. 38 No. 6 Pg. 12 |
| Pages | 12 |
| Publication year | 2015 |
Mark W. Gifford Bar Counsel.
What Do Christopher Columbus and LegalZoom Have in Common?
In the decades that followed Christopher Columbus’s 1492 discovery voyage, Spain experienced change at a dizzying pace. Gold and treasures poured in from the Americas; trade boomed; much of the population migrated to the cities. Spain’s burgeoning economy, combined with forces of social upheaval, led to an unprecedented number of lawsuits. In 1532, the Castilian legislature sent an urgent message to the Spanish Crown:
“Your Majesty is in need of a large number of judges in these kingdoms. Litigation has been so much on the increase that cases are not decided with due speed, leading to such great expense and trouble for the litigants that often both parties spend much more than the case is worth and they end up completely ruined, while the advocates, solicitors and notaries get rich.”[1]
So begins Chapter 5 of Robert Goodwin’s captivating new book, Spain: Te Center of the World 1519-1682. “[W]here Spaniards had once readily resorted to armed conflict in order to settle their differences … Castilians began to place their trust in the newly empowered Crown and instead of going into battle they went to law.”[2]
As Spain entered the sixteenth century, it was ill-equipped for the explosion of lawsuits that was to come, one of many unforeseeable consequences of Columbus’s discovery of a New World. Te practice of law was loosely regulated. There was no bar organization. Law degrees were awarded after five years of study. A law graduate would appear before the judges in an audencia, a region’s court of general jurisdiction, and after examination and verification of credentials, would be admitted to practice as an abogado.[3]
As the demand for legal services increased, a second category of practitioner emerged. Procuradores (procurators) had no degree requirement and learned the law through clerkship or apprenticeship. Procurators would endeavor to help a client solve a dispute without litigation. If a trial was required, the procurator would hand the case of to an abogado, a process roughly akin to the barrister/solicitor relationship in England. Procuradores were required to be licensed; most cities limited the number of procurators to 30 or 40.[4] Procurators “bought their posts and treated them as in-vestments.”[5]
It was not long before there were not enough abogados and procuradores to satisfy the needs of consumers of legal services, and a third category of legal technicians surfaced, solicitadores (solicitors). Solicitors were unregulated, to put it mildly.
“Te solicitadores were a mixed bunch...
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