Harvard Law School Student Law Club Records

During much of the nineteenth century, moot court exercises were an integral part of the Harvard Law School curriculum. When interest in these school-sponsored moot courts began to wan in the 1870s, it was due in part to the rise in popularity of various law clubs, which held moot courts of their own. In the mid-1800s the prominent clubs were Coke, Kent, Bracton, Fleta, and Marshall. The Marshall Club was the oldest, having been founded in 1825. The clubs were made up of students elected from each class based on their social prominence and legal ability, and were often organized according to previous affiliation. (The Kent Club, for instance, was made up of students who had attended college at Yale.) During these years, the law clubs often argued cases that were on the school-sponsored moot court docket, but which had not yet been decided. The differences between the decisions of the clubs’ student judges and those of the Professors who decided the moot court case were apparently the subject of amusement.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the law clubs increased in both number and popularity. The new clubs were divided into three courts: the Superior, consisting of first year students; the Supreme, consisting of second year students; and the Court of Appeals, consisting of 3rd year students, once the Law School program included a third year. The school-sponsored moot court system was discontinued, and the Law School faculty began taking an active interest in the law clubs. By 1908, the school had approximately fifty different law clubs, the most prominent being Ames-Gray, Williston, Kent, Austin, Choate, George Gray, Harlan, English 6, Bryce, Holmes, Langdell, Moody, Parsons, Smith, Story, Westengard, Witenagemot, and Wyman.

The law clubs continued to hold moot courts into the second decade of the twentieth century, but after 1910, with the institution of the Board of Student Advisors and the Ames Competition, interest in the clubs decreased.