{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} A '''reader''' in one of the Inns of Court in London was originally a senior barrister of the Inn who was elected to deliver a lecture or series of lectures on a particular legal topic.<ref> {{cite web |url = http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad/glossary.html |title = Inner Temple Admissions Database: Glossary |publisher = The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple |accessdate = 2010-07-10 |url-status = dead |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20110314061419/http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad/glossary.html |archivedate = 2011-03-14 }}</ref><ref name="S">{{cite journal|last=Simpson|first=A.W.B.|author-link=A. W. B. Simpson|date=1975|title=The Early Constitution of Gray's Inn|journal=Cambridge Law Journal|publisher=Cambridge University Press|volume=34|issue=1|pages=138–139|doi=10.1017/S0008197300092102|issn=0008-1973}}</ref> Two readers (known as Lent and Autumn Readers) would be elected annually to serve a one-year term.
Lincoln's Inn became formally organised as a place of legal education thanks to a decree in 1464, which required a reader to give lectures to the law students there.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ringrose|first=Hyacinthe|title=The Inns of Court An Historical Description|publisher=R.L. Williams|page=81|location=Oxford|year=1909|oclc=60732875}}</ref>
By 1569, at Gray's Inn, there had been readers for more than a century. Before the rise of the benchers, they formed the governing body of the inn.<ref name=S />
==References== {{Reflist}}
Category:English law Category:Bar of England and Wales Category:Inns of Court
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