There are three orders of men at the English Bar: 1. Attorneys, or Solicitors in Chancery. 2. Barristers; and 3. Serjeants. 1. _Attorneys and Solicitors._--Acts of Parliament have been made for the regulation of this class. The Stat. 6 & 7 Vict. c. 73, consolidating and amending several of the laws relating to attorneys and solicitors, prescribes the conditions of admission as an attorney, the time and mode of their service under articles; and the oaths to be administered to them; and authorizes the Judges of the courts of the common law, and the Master of the Rolls to appoint examiners to examine the fitness and capacity of all persons applying to be admitted as attorneys or solicitors; and the certificate, either of the common law or equity examiners, will be sufficient to entitle a person so examined to admission in all the courts, examination by both not being necessary. 3 Stewart's Blackst. 29. 2. _Barristers._--The proper legal denomination of this class is _apprentices_, being the first degree in the law conferred by the inns of court. Spelman defines apprentice, _tyro_, _discipulus_, _novitius in aliqua facultate_. This was probably the meaning of the term primarily; but as early as the reign of Edward I, it was employed to denote counsel below the state and degree of serjeant at law; one degree corresponding to that of bachelor, and the other to that of doctor, in the universities (Pearce's History of the Inns of Court, 28). Lord Coke informs us, however, that this degree was anciently preferred to that of serjeant (2 Inst. 214). They were termed _apprenticii ad legem_, or _ad barras_; and hence arose the cognomen of _barristers_. A barrister must have kept twelve terms, _i. e._, been three years a member of an inn of court, before he can be called to the Bar. After a member of an inn of court has kept twelve terms, he may, without being called, obtain permission to practice _under the Bar_. This class of practitioners are called _special pleaders_ or _equity draftsmen_ (according as they prepare pleadings in the common law or equity courts), or _conveyancers_, who prepare deeds. 3 Stewart's Blackst. 26, note. Those who are regularly called, however, may take upon them the causes of all suitors. Such of the barristers as have a patent of precedence, as king's counsel, sit within the Bar, with the serjeants; all others are called _utter_ or _outer barristers_.