From award-winning biographer Philip Girard, Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America is the first history of the legal profession in Canada to emphasize its cross-provincial similarities and its deep roots in the colonial period. Girard details how nineteenth-century British North American lawyers created a distinctive Canadian template for the profession by combining the strong collective governance of the English tradition with the high degree of creativity and client responsiveness characteristic of U.S. lawyers — a mix that forms the basis of the legal profession in Canada today.

Girard provides a unique window on the interconnections between lawyers' roles as community leaders and as legal professionals. Centred on one pre-Confederation lawyer whose career epitomizes the trends of his day, Beamish Murdoch (1800-1876), Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America makes an important and compelling contribution to Canadian legal history.

Philip Girard is University Research Professor and Professor of Law, History and Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University, where he is based at the Schulich School of Law. He has published widely on Canadian and comparative legal history. His biography Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (Osgoode Society, 2005) received the Chalmers Award for the best book published in Ontario history in that year, while his Lawyers and Legal Culture in British North America: Beamish Murdoch of Halifax (Osgoode Society, 2011) received the Clio Atlantic award from the Canadian Historical Association in 2012. He is the associate editor of the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

Philip Girard's profile page

• Winner, Clio Prize (Atlantic) awarded by the Canadian Historical Association