Before typewriters, law offices employed rooms of clerks whose entire job was to hand-copy documents — contracts, pleadings, correspondence — in fair copy, a role famously fictionalized in Herman Melville's 1853 story Bartleby, the Scrivener. Mass adoption of the typewriter from the 1870s, followed by carbon paper and later photocopiers, eliminated the trade within a few decades.
The copying clerk no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
c. 1340–1750
England splits the profession in two
Barristers trained and were called to the bar exclusively by the four Inns of Court, arguing cases and giving specialist opinions, while a separate, lower-status class of attorneys and solicitors prepared cases, managed clients and handled paperwork the barristers would not touch. London solicitors formalized their own standards through the Society of Gentlemen Practisers in 1739, cementing a barrister-solicitor divide that England still keeps today, though most other countries never adopted it.
What else was happening then
1869
Arabella Mansfield becomes the first US woman lawyer
Arabella Mansfield is admitted to the Iowa bar, becoming the first woman licensed to practice law in the United States, despite an Iowa statute at the time restricting admission to men.
1922
Ivy Williams is called to the English Bar
Following the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Ivy Williams becomes the first woman called to the Bar of England and Wales, though Helena Normanton, called shortly after, becomes the first woman to actually practice as a barrister.
Where that work lives now
Advises clients, drafts the documents that bind them, and argues their case when it reaches court — carrying personal legal liability if the advice is wrong.
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