This book is a history of Latin American lawyers from Columbus to globalization.

This book is the first comprehensive history of the intellectual training and social placement of lawyers in Latin America. Pérez-Perdomo examines the Roman legal roots of the Latin American tradition and traces the development of legal education and practice in Latin America from the 16th century to the present. The main themes in the book are the relationship between lawyers and power, the place of lawyers in social stratification, the role of law and lawyers in building nations and maintaining elite power, the role of law schools, and the main intellectual trends in legal thought.

"This work of imposing scholarship by a leading Latin American sociologist of law provides the first coherent, sociologically reliable history of lawyers in Latin America."