He kept a complete memorandum of all the cases in which he appeared before the courts of Virginia and opposite each case entered the fee received for his professional services.[21] These fees would seem very moderate to the least ambitious practitioner of our days. In many cases no fee is mentioned at all, and we are at liberty to suppose that Jefferson took some charity cases, or that the defendants were not always scrupulous in paying their bills. Yet, altogether, the total averaged close to three thousand dollars a year, a nice fat addition to the income from Shadwell and Monticello. Starting with one hundred and fifteen cases in 1768, Jefferson was retained as attorney or counsel in no less than four hundred thirty cases in 1771, and it is no exaggeration to state that no day passed during the twelve years he remained engaged in the practice of law without his giving considerable time to his profession. The moderate amount of these fees and the large number of cases indicate the kind of practice in which Jefferson was employed. Trespassing of cattle on a neighbor's field, destruction of fences, robbery committed by a clerk, wills, administration of estates, interest, quarrels between two goodwives, with a lively exchange of actionable words, assault and battery, all the seamy, sordid, petty side of life, constituted for these twelve years the daily practice of Thomas Jefferson, an apprenticeship of life and a training in the knowledge of human nature enjoyed by very few abstract philosophers. In the old days of the bar, one of the earmarks of most lawyers was a fluency of speech, unsurpassed except perhaps by the ministers. But words never came easily to Jefferson, or in great abundance. His voice, pleasant and modulated in ordinary conversation, "sank in his throat", if raised higher, and became husky. He was clearly a business lawyer, an office lawyer, whose clear, precise, meticulous presentation of facts fitted him particularly for appearing before a court of appeals like the General Court, rather than for moving and emotionally convincing a jury of twelve men good and true.