our history
Our Story
In the early Middle Ages, young men wishing to study law gathered at the homes of professors of law. As the number of students increased, the professors went to the inns where the students lived to teach. These inns were called the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn and are located near the Court’s of Justice just off Fleet Street in “Old London” The four “Inns of Court” came to mean not only the buildings, but also the legal societies that owned and used them. By long custom, only the “Inns of Court” can admit a barrister to practice his or her profession before the Courts of England. The phrase “admitted to the bar” originated in the Inns of Court, where the student became a full-fledged lawyer when he was finally allowed to leave his seat in the outer court and try a case at the wooden “rail or bar” while the judges and admitted lawyers sat on the other side of the “bar”. When the Four Inns Restaurant was constructed in 1970 in the Minnesota Building, many of the tenants in that building were judges and lawyers. Many of these judges and lawyers came from the Court House, one block away, to have their breakfast or lunch. Thus, it was decided to take on the name - The Four Inns. The caricatures on the wall are of English judges by the artist Sallon.
