Inns of Court in the context of "Gray's Inn"

The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional association for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practice as a barrister in England and Wales, a person must belong to one of these Inns. It is located in the wider Temple area, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and within the City of London. As a liberty, it functions largely as an independent local government authority.

The Inn is a professional body that provides legal training, selection, and regulation for members. It is ruled by a governing council called "Parliament", made up of the Masters of the Bench (or "Benchers"), and led by the Treasurer, who is elected to serve a one-year term. The Temple takes its name from the Knights Templar, who originally (until their abolition in 1312) leased the land to the Temple's inhabitants (Templars). The Inner Temple was a distinct society from at least 1388, although as with all the Inns of Court its precise date of founding is not known. After a disrupted early period (during which the Temple was almost entirely destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt) it flourished, becoming the second-largest Inn during the Elizabethan period (after Gray's Inn).

The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to the bar". "The bar" is now used as a collective noun for barristers, but literally referred to the wooden barrier in old courtrooms, which separated the often crowded public area at the rear from the space near the judges reserved for those having business with the court. Barristers would sit or stand immediately behind it, facing the judge, and could use it as a table for their briefs.

Like many other common law terms, the term originated in England in the Middle Ages, and the call to the bar refers to the summons issued to one found fit to speak at the "bar" of the royal courts. In time, English judges allowed only legally qualified men to address them on the law and later delegated the qualification and admission of barristers to the four Inns of Court. Once an inn calls one of its members to its bar, they are thereafter a barrister. They may not, however, practise as a barrister until they have completed (or been exempted from) an apprenticeship called pupillage. After completing pupillage, they are considered to be a practising barrister with a right of audience before all courts.

The Vinerian Professorship of English Law, formerly Vinerian Professorship of Common Law, was established by Charles Viner, who by his will, dated 29 December 1755, left about £12,000 to the chancellor, masters and scholars of the University of Oxford, to establish a professorship of the common law in that university, as well as a number of Vinerian scholarships and readerships.

Until the establishment of the Vinerian Chair, only canon law and Roman (civil) law had been taught at Oxford and Cambridge. Only the Inns of Court provided any instruction in the common law, which was of most practical use to practitioners. Upon Sir William Blackstone's appointment to the Vinerian Professorship, his lectures were the first to be given on English Common Law at any university.

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to swear off the company of women for three years in order to focus on study and fasting. Their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of France and her ladies makes them forsworn (break their oath). In an untraditional ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess's father, and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine love and desire, reckoning and rationalisation, and reality versus fantasy.

Though first published in quarto in 1598, the play's title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the play. There are no obvious sources for the play's plot. The use of apostrophes in the play's title varies in early editions, though it is most commonly given as Love's Labour's Lost.

The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is a court building in Westminster which houses the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The High Court also sits on circuit and in other major cities. Designed by George Edmund Street, who died before it was completed, it is a large grey stone edifice in the Victorian Gothic Revival style built in the 1870s and opened by Queen Victoria in 1882. It is one of the largest courts in Europe. It is a Grade I listed building.

It is located on the Strand within the City of Westminster, near the boundary with the City of London (Temple Bar). It is surrounded by the four Inns of Court, St Clement Danes church, the Australian High Commission, King's College London and the London School of Economics. The nearest London Underground stations are Chancery Lane and Temple.

The Temple is an area or precinct of the City of London surrounding Temple Church. It is one of the main legal districts in London and a notable centre for English law, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It consists of the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, which are two of the four Inns of Court and act as local authorities in place of the City of London Corporation as to almost all structures and functions. Before the establishment of these Inns of Court, the Temple area was the precinct given to the Knights Templar (who built the church) until they were suppressed in 1312, but the area has retained the name from that time. It became a centre of the legal profession soon afterwards.

The Royal Courts of Justice and Temple Bar are just to the north and Temple tube station borders to the southwest in the City of Westminster. The precinct is roughly bounded by the River Thames (the Victoria Embankment) to the south, Surrey Street to the west, the Strand and Fleet Street to the north and Carmelite Street and Whitefriars Street to the east. The intervening Essex Street, two streets east of Surrey Street, is the traditional western boundary, beyond which are affluent office/hotel and residential blocks, spread over large three street blocks which are closest to the station.

A bencher or Master of the Bench is a senior member of an Inn of Court in England and Wales or the Inns of Court in Northern Ireland, or the Honorable Society of King's Inns in Ireland. Benchers hold office for life once elected. A bencher can be elected while still a barrister (usually, but not always, King's Counsel in the UK or Senior Counsel in Ireland), in recognition of the contribution that the barrister has made to the life of the Inn or to the law. Others become benchers as a matter of course when appointed as a High Court judge. The Inn may elect non-members as honorary benchers – for example, distinguished judges and lawyers from other countries, eminent non-lawyers or (in the English Inns) members of the British royal family, who become known as "Royal Benchers" once elected.

One member of each Inn is the Treasurer, a position which is held for one year only. While succession to the post of Treasurer was once dependent purely on seniority (or auncienty), this is no longer the case. The Treasurer is now elected. Two Readers are also elected each year.