Our records on legal education in the Caribbean primarily relate to the law in British colonies and ex-colonies as viewed, overseen and developed by British legal education bodies in collaboration with government, local and international pressure groups. The gradual extension of autonomy to formerly colonial legal systems depicted in the records should be viewed as part of the decolonization of law.
For records relating to legal education of individuals from the Caribbean the most valuable collections comprise the examinations records of the Council of Legal Education (CLE), 1852-1997 and The Law Society, 1836-1989. Both collections (up to 1946) have been digitised by Ancestry and access to the digitised versions, including downloading digital copies for private research, is subject to Ancestry’s terms and conditions. The Council of Legal Education collection should be accessible on Ancestry later this year. To find the examination record of any individual in The Law Society collection search here: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62335/. The Law Society collection further divides results according to the country where the examinations took place (ref LSOC/14: Colonial and Commonwealth Examinations, 1887-1984), including volumes for Barbados, British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad.
Other records about the Caribbean generally may be found in:
- The CLE archives, which contain some correspondence relating to the West Indies from 1973-1986 (ref: CLE/47).
- The archives of the Commonwealth Legal Association (CLEA): 1971-1995 including some papers relating to Caribbean law schools from 1981-1986 (ref: CLEA/1 and CLEA/2)
- The Institutional Archives of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS), 1934-2021 which holds Nuffield fellows’ research papers on Barbados (1994) and Trinidad and Tobago (1996) (ref: IALS/26/3).
- The International Law Association (ILA) Archives 1866-2019 which contains a secretarial file on the Barbados branch of the ILA dated 1980 (ref: ILA/1/7/11/7) plus records of regional branches of the ILA, including the Trinidad and Tobago branch 1960-1985 (ref: ILA/4/31) and the Caribbean branch 1993-1993 (ref: ILA/4/65).
Related Material
See IALS Archives subject guide: Colonialism, Decolonisation and the Law and a blog review by the Archivist of a new publication about Iris de Freitas Brazeo, the first woman to be called to the bar in the Commonwealth Caribbean.
About the IALS Archives
The IALS Archives was established in the 1990s as an outcome of a project to investigate the location and availability for research of records of legal education. During the project IALS accepted a number of collections from individuals and organisations which were at risk of loss. Since the end of the project IALS has continued to accept deposits of archive material relating to legal education. In 2022 the IALS Archives achieved accreditation from The National Archives.
