Attorneys-at-Law in Ukmergė District Courts in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract

The study discusses litigants’ attorneys-at-law of in the courts of the Ukmergė district in the early seventeenth century. The land court books from that period have not survived, while the castle court books, from which these individuals could be identified, have survived only fragmentarily and not all are accessible or contain judicial records. Most often, the disputing parties litigated through representatives authorised orally (arriving with the litigants) or in writing (without the litigants’ participation). Although only few of the examined court books have survived and the representatives can be traced in detail only from the beginning of the third decade of the seventeenth century, it can be stated that there were 5–7 permanent pre-advocates (proto-lawyers) in Ukmergė, and in total nearly thirty such individuals were identified. Since the most informative are two castle court books from the third decade of the seventeenth century, the chronologically ‘emptier’ first decades of that century are supplemented with information from the books of neighbouring (Kaunas, Upytė) or more distant (Samogitia) courts. The early-seventeenth-century court books of the Ukmergė district were not yet divided into separate series by the type of records, but they already feature a classification into notarial, pre-procedural, and judicial process groups. The most active representatives of litigants represented several or a dozen cases during one session. Such work intensity suggests that they must have had several assistants, but the lack of sources does not yet allow this claim to be proven or refuted.
All groups of the district’s landowners, from magnates to petty nobility, made use of attorneys’ services. The clergy, merchants, or foreigners also used them, and most often the same individuals as in the cases of the nobility. The interests of subordinates were represented by their lord or a servant, who also had attorneys. Since this study on attorneys-at-law is an ongoing one, by summarising data from several regions we can identify individuals who managed to work as attorneys in the courts of 2–4 districts during their lifetime. Without delving into their biographies, it is difficult to assert whether this proves their high competence or merely human resourcefulness in caring for their financial well-being.
The material from the court books of the Ukmergė district in the early seventeenth century provides data almost exclusively from the castle court books, which in principle does not change the conclusions of the study, to the effect that in this district, like in others, the nobility/landowners were well-versed in legal norms and actively used the services of more educated attorneys. Representatives of the noble ‘nation’ were highly sensitive to any procedural or formal record-keeping violations. A slightest suspicion of procedural infringement would provoke their stormy protests and disputes, demonstrating the growing legal erudition of the nobility.