Definition
Deviling refers to the practice of a junior lawyer or legal apprentice performing subordinate legal work on behalf of a more senior practitioner, typically a barrister or counsel, without public credit or direct compensation from the client. The "devil" performs drafts, research, and preparatory work that the senior lawyer presents or signs. The term "deviling" describes the act of performing this role.
More broadly, Bouvier's captures the sense as performing the "hack-work of a semi-literary or legal nature" — routine, unglamorous tasks done in service of another's professional output.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle of "devil," with no independent meaning beyond the verb.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A young devil." Marked obsolete.
The gap here is complete. Neither common usage touches the legal or professional meaning. In legal and literary trade usage, a "devil" was a recognized subordinate worker — someone doing the unseen labor underlying another's professional product. The legal sense is entirely a term of professional practice, not derived from any common understanding of the word.
---
Common Confusion
Deviling should not be confused with the broader concept of pupillage (in English barristers' training) or with clerkship in the American sense, though all three involve junior practitioners learning through subordinate work. Deviling specifically emphasizes the performance of substantive work product on behalf of a senior — work the senior takes credit for — rather than mere observation or administrative assistance. The devil may or may not be formally enrolled in a training program; the defining feature is the subordinate production of legal work under another's name.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Deviling is a term of English and Scottish legal professional culture, appearing most naturally in historical sources dealing with the bar and chambers practice. Researchers consulting 19th-century materials on legal education, professional ethics, or the organization of the English bar will encounter this term in discussions of how junior barristers built practice and income.
The term signals a specific professional relationship that has implications for authorship of legal work product. Where historical documents, opinions, or briefs are attributed to a senior barrister, there may be a devil behind the actual drafting — a fact relevant to intellectual and professional history research but invisible from the face of the document.
Researchers working in American legal sources will rarely encounter "deviling" as a term of art. It is primarily a feature of the English common law professional tradition and appears in transatlantic sources only when writers were consciously borrowing or describing English practice.
The term also appears in the broader context of literary and journalistic "hack-work," where a devil performed similar ghostwriting functions for publishers and authors. This overlap means that non-legal historical sources — trade dictionaries, publishing histories — may illuminate the term's usage better than strictly legal sources in some periods.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's defines deviling by reference to the Standard Dictionary ("Stand. Dict."), not developing the term independently. This brevity is telling: Bouvier's treats deviling as a recognized practice term that requires identification rather than elaboration. The entry acknowledges both the legal and semi-literary dimensions, confirming that the term was not exclusive to the courtroom but described a class of subordinate professional labor across learned trades.
No other major American legal dictionary of the historical period develops this term at length, reflecting its status as an English professional practice concept rather than a term embedded in American doctrine or procedure. Researchers should not expect to find doctrinal content attached to this term; it describes a practice relationship, not a legal rule or cause of action.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Deviling is a term rooted in English and Scottish bar practice. It has no formal equivalent in American legal professional vocabulary, where similar arrangements might be described informally or fall under general employment or ghostwriting frameworks. Researchers working in Commonwealth legal history will find the term more operationally significant than those focused on U.S. sources.
---