Gibson and Weldon

Gibson and Weldon was a law practice at 27 Chancery Lane in London and the name of its tutorial firm which from 1876 until 1962 prepared hundreds of thousands of future solicitors and barristers in England and Wales for their examinations. Gibson and Weldon also published the monthly journal Law Notes and a series of legal textbooks from adjacent offices at 25–26 Chancery Lane. The firm's principles were Albert Gibson (1852–1921) and Arthur William Weldon (1856–1943). After the death of Arthur Weldon the tutorial firm continued until 1962 when it was merged with the Law Society's own law school to form the College of Law (since 2013 known as the University of Law).

The latter part of the 19th century saw the introduction of formal examinations for entry into the legal profession. From 1862 solicitors were required to pass the Intermediate and Preliminary Examinations set by the Law Society, and later a prestigious Honours Examination was introduced. Compulsory written examinations for barristers were introduced in 1872. The university law schools concentrated on the principles, as opposed to the practice, of the law and found it increasingly difficult to sustain courses which could provide the practical knowledge required to pass the examinations The Council of Legal Education, established by the Inns of Court in 1852, had the same problem. This in turn led to the rise of specialist tutorial firms which legal historian Patricia Leighton has termed "the first professional law teachers." The firms were largely established and run by practicing attorneys in London. The tension arising in the profession between the systems followed by the university law schools and those of the tutorial firms had sometimes led them to be dismissed as "crammers". It was a tension reflected in Gibson and Weldon's own 1905 advertisement stating that their "system of student preparation is as far as possible that of a Law School and all idea of preparing students on a 'cram' system is disregarded." Over 60 years after the firm's founding, the British jurist R. M. Jackson wrote in The Machinery of Justice in England:

I was in my time a pupil of Gibson and Weldon and I received better training from Mr. Weldon than I ever had in Cambridge, and by that I do not mean just the know-how to pass examinations but a real insight into the ways of lawyers and the courts.

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