Professionalism.

Changes in the practice of law during the mid nineteenth century fit into a broader development of professionalism as a theme unifying different sorts of work. Just as training in law became more structured and admission to practice became more closely regulated, similar trends could be seen in other fields ranging from medicine to architecture. The overarching rise of professionalism was tied to the expansion of the economy, which provided new markets for various specialists, and also to the increasing prestige of science, which helped to explain why professionalization in medicine preceded comparable developments in law by a generation. The analogy of law to science that was so pervasive during the third quarter of the nineteenth century would later lose much of its appeal, but not until it had left a lasting imprint on the organization of the legal profession.

Langdell's Law.