Education in law in the Scottish universities has a continuous history only from the early eighteenth century. In 1707, the Regius Professorship of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations was founded in Edinburgh, to be followed in 1710 and 1722 by Professorships in Civil (Roman) and Scots Law respectively. In the University of Glasgow, the Regius Professorship of Civil Law was established in late 1713 and first filled in 1714. These developments were not entirely novel. Throughout the seventeenth century, there had been regular, if unsuccessful, attempts to create university chairs in Law. While the background to the foundation of the university chairs requires further careful study, we may note that, by at least around 1690, it was thought desirable to introduce the teaching of both Civil and Scots law, though the notion of teaching both does go back at least as far as the First Book of Discipline of 1561. After the visitation of the University of Edinburgh that resulted from the political and religious settlements of 1688–1689, it was proposed to establish a single professorship to teach both Civil and Scots law. This proposal in the late seventeenth century is in line with general developments throughout Europe. Nothing, however, was done, probably because no person or body was willing to finance a chair.

In the absence of legal education in the universities, members of the Bar started to teach law privately at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. The first three known to have done so were Alexander Drummond in 1699, John Spottiswoode in 1702, and John Cuninghame (or Cunningham) in 1705. They all taught both Civil and Scots law. Nothing is known of Drummond's teaching other than that he offered his services “to all persons who are desirous to be instructed in the knowledge of the Institutions and Pandects of the Civil Law, and the laws of this kingdom, or either of the two, or both”, and that he claimed “by reason of a singular method … in teaching of the civil law … to perfite [sic] and accomplish any of a middle capacity, more in a years time, then [sic] others have been by being abroad and out of the country 3 years”.