Andrew Inglis Clark - Early Legal Career

Early Legal Career

Clark was called to bar in 1877. He soon gained a reputation as a criminal lawyer in a 'poisoning case', but went on to gain a large practice in civil and commercial law as well. He practiced law both while in and out of parliament. During those periods when he was not serving as Attorney-General, he worked hard to build a successful practice. He failed to find his fortune in the law due to his generosity and refusal 'to accept anything beyond a reasonable and modest fee'. In 1887 he went into partnership with Matthew Wilkes Simmons.

His career in private practice gave him a broad grounding in the law which stood him in good stead once he was promoted to the bench. Clark was knowledgeable in all branches of the law, but pre-eminent as a constitutional lawyer and jurist.

Clark, never in robust health, in fact described as "small, spare and nervous" by Alfred Deakin, died in 1907. He is buried in the old Queenborough Cemetery at Sandy Bay.

Read more about this topic:  Andrew Inglis Clark

Famous quotes containing the words early, legal and/or career:

    Foolish prater, What dost thou
    So early at my window do?
    Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
    A dream out of my arms to-day;
    A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
    By all that waking eyes may see.
    Thou this damage to repair
    Nothing half so sweet and fair,
    Nothing half so good, canst bring,
    Tho’ men say thou bring’st the Spring.
    Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)

    I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)