Born the year Garrow entered, and Erskine left, Lincoln's Inn, the third member of the Scottish trinity of great common law lawyers is Henry Brougham. Although his father was English, his mother was Scottish, and Henry was born and brought up in the intellectual centre of the Enlightenment world, Edinburgh. He was educated at both the Royal High School there and at its university, studying natural sciences and mathematics as well as law. Admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1800, he practised little in Scotland before he too, in 1803, enrolled in Lincoln's Inn. Five years later he was called to the English Bar.

A founder of, and leading contributor to, the radical publication The Edinburgh Review, and an ardent opponent of slavery, he was guaranteed a warm reception by the leading London Whigs, Lord Grey and Fox in particular. He enthusiastically engaged with Wilberforce in his anti-slave trade campaign and wrote several tracts in support.

He also successfully represented John and Leigh Hunt in their trial for seditious libel, the supposed libel being an exposure of the extent and severity of flogging in the British Army. In February 1811 the trial took place in the King's Bench before Chief Justice Ellenborough, and was prosecuted by a future Chief Justice, Vicary Gibbs. Addressing the jury, Brougham told them that they were trying a more general question than whether the article was written for a wicked purpose: ‘You are now to determine whether an Englishman still enjoys the privilege of freely discussing public measures.’