Frontier lawyers subsisted chiefly on land and debt collection work

Evidence

Some lawyers came West, acting as agents for eastern land speculators, then later struck out on their own. Their main legal business was land—​buying it and selling it for others, searching titles, making deeds. Land was the backbone of practice. It was also a medium of payment. Michael Stoner hired young Henry Clay, in 1801, to “prosecute a claim … to five hundred acres of Land.” Clay would pay all the costs; if he won, he was to receive one-​fourth of the winnings. Another staple of the practice was collection work. Lawyers dunned and sued, both for local people and for easterners who held debts in the form of promissory notes. Clay, in Kentucky, got paid by claiming a percentage of the money he collected (5 percent or more); sometimes he warned debtors that he would go to law to seize their property if they failed to pay up. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1839

Categorization

• XREF: Frontier land-title practice connects to ch34’s account of the federal rectangular survey and mass land market. — connects to: Western lawyers pursued politics, land, and litigation as fortune routes — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1828

Broader Connections

• Western lawyers pursued politics, land, and litigation as fortune routes #corroborates (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1828