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Verrier, Louis-Guillaume
Louis-Guillaume Verrier, lawyer, teacher, attorney general of the Conseil Supérieur of New France (b at Paris, France 19 Oct 1690; d at Québec C 13 Sept 1758). He is noteworthy for his service as attorney general, the chief law officer for the colony (1728-58), for his survey of notarial deeds (1730-32) and exhaustive register of landed property in the colony (1732-40), and especially for his establishment, in 1733, of Canada's first structured program of legal education. Descended from a family of Parisian jurists and himself a lawyer in the parlement of Paris, this impecunious bachelor earned the reputation, following his immigration to Québec in 1728, of being a meticulous scholar and compulsive bibliophile. The quality of his law-school graduates moved Louis XV in 1741 to rescind a 1678 ordinance prohibiting lawyers from practising in New France. As a result a literate and active group of schooled advocates emerged who played an important role in the post-Conquest affirmation of Seigneurial tenure and the Coutume de Paris, and in the 1785 restructuring of Québec's legal profession.
