England's most elite legal order for centuries, serjeants-at-law held the exclusive right of audience before the Court of Common Pleas and wore a distinctive white coif; only a serjeant could become a judge of that court. The Judicature Acts of 1873–75 stripped away the order's monopoly, and the last surviving serjeant died in 1921, five decades after the order had already stopped admitting new members.
The serjeant-at-law no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
c. 1088–1500
Bologna, the glossators and canon law
Bologna's rediscovery of Justinian's texts turned Roman law into a university subject taught through close textual commentary — the glossators, led by Irnerius, wrote marginal notes ('glosses') that became legal doctrine in their own right. Parallel canon-law courts, run by clergy trained in the same method, handled marriage, inheritance and morality cases across Christian Europe, producing a second, overlapping class of trained legal professionals.
What else was happening then
c. 1340s
London's Inns of Court take shape
Barristers-in-training begin organizing around four residential legal societies in London — Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple — that combine housing, dining and legal education, and still alone control England's call to the Bar.
1628
Coke publishes his Institutes of the Lawes of England
Former Chief Justice Edward Coke publishes the first part of his four-volume Institutes, a systematic treatise on English common law that remains a foundational reference cited in common-law courts centuries later.
1739
London solicitors form their first professional body
The Society of Gentlemen Practisers in the Courts of Law and Equity, an early professional association for London attorneys and solicitors, forms to police standards and fees — a direct ancestor of the modern Law Society, founded in 1825.
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.
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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