The earliest correspondence I found for “legal beagle” comes from an unidentified article in Publication of the American Dialect Society (1944) commenting on the phrase [combined excerpts]: The term “legal beagle” also appears in the November 1, 1946 issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly, while “legal eagle” appears twice in the same general period – the February 14, 1947 issue and the May 16, 1947 issue. SIDE NOTE 1: Sometimes the term Legal Eagle is used instead of Legal Beagle. Both terms are sometimes replaced by the phrase Philadelphia lawyer! As for the “legal eagle”, Australians show no sign that they have adopted it as an alternative to “legal eagle” or as a separate term. In the United States, the “legal beagle” is showing signs that it took hold around 1946, suggesting that it may have turned out to be a pleasant variant of “legal eagle” after the term became firmly established in American slang. The use of the term in advertisements for Perry Mason`s detective novels may have helped him become more popular. Since that episode [featuring a doctor pointing out numerous flaws in descriptions of Queen`s medical practice in a detective novel], Dannay and Lee have gotten into the habit of checking medical details with their GP before publication. They also hire a lawyer to clarify them in legal matters; At one point, his legal eagle struggled non-stop for two days and nights to get out of a problem with a complicated will. I`m not a legal beagle, not even a lawyer like Downing, but I served 28 sessions in the Oklahoma legislature during recessions and even a depression, so if they think this last session was the “hardest ever,” it only underscores how little they know. Tom Leidy has been appointed attorney for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he is an attorney; Dwight Parsons, Legal Eagle of Akron, Ohio, attended the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. The Legal Eagle/Legal Beagle situation is what linguists call redundant with others, including fuddy-duddy, hoity-toity, namby-pamby, and wishy-washy. While Idiomation would like to be able to definitively link Legal Eagle or Legal Beagle to a specific date — or even decade — as far as lawyers are concerned, the next thing the idiomation can determine is that both expressions, as far as lawyers and their skills are concerned, most likely found their way into English from the mid to late 1930s. A very early example of “Legal Eagle” in the United States appears Henry Gaston, The Little Lawyer; or The Farmers.” Mechanics`, Miners`s, Laborer, and Business Men`s Adviser and Legal Help and Legal Adviser (1880): This glare on Wall Street probably comes from a large brass plaque with the engraving E.
Newton Cutler, assistant vice president of the National City Bank, and just around the corner, the law firm Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Sunderland & Kiendl (advt.) is now challenging all other firms to match their representation of four `37 people, namely Charlie Pierce, Lang Van Norden, your secretary and, as of July 1, none other than the famous legal beagle Jack Irwin. The term “Legal Eagle” also appeared in the December 2, 1940 and May 20, 1941 issues of Princeton Alumni Weekly. A bookstore ad in Michigan Raw Review (1941) [combined excerpts] offers this temptation: Now Electric Traction Hole-In-One Club, has a “Legal Eagle” A. L. Vencill, of the legal department of the Union Switch and Signal Company, negotiated a hole in a shot at the Edgewood Country Club, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 19, 1928. BIANCA AND ALBERTO: [sung] We`d better trust the legal eagle. Wentworth & Flexner places both terms in the subcategory of “intentional rhyme terms and jive” of “rhyme terms and rhymed slang” – and that certainly seems reasonable. But the dictionary takes no position on whether “legal beagle” comes from “legal eagle.” BIANCA AND ALBERTO: Yes, it is certain as it can be / That he will soon earn his fees.
/ For a legal beagle, he is the legal eagle. At least for the world in prison, we believe we can assume three reasons for synonyms: first, a basic human pleasure in puns, which creates rhyming slang such as legal eagle or legal beagle; secondly, the vast inventory of names that already exist in the American language, from which, for example, black names originate; and, finally, those arising from the particular problems of daily prison life. We have strict expectations that all articles meet our journalistic standards using credible sources. Appropriate sources include, but are not limited to, federal, state, and local laws, federal and state jurisdiction, and government websites, as well as respected and credible media and legal publications. The sources mentioned are all presented accordingly in the articles. The research also uncovered an American Bar Center book published by the American Law Student Association in 1958. There were three entries worth mentioning in this book: one was a publication called “Legal Eagle” at American University, the second was a publication called “Legal Beagle” at Washington College of Law, and the third was “The Legal Eagle” at North Carolina College. A few years earlier, in one of the 1952 American Eagle newsletters, the term Legal Eagle appeared in a short blurb about one of the well-known men in the forest products industry. 3. Did another famous beagle or detective dog inspire the legal beagle strike? In Australia, where Wildflower productions toured the country for years, the “Legal Eagle” seems to have established itself in the 1920s directly because of the play`s popularity. In the United States, there are few similarities to “Legal Eagle” between 1923 and 1939, when the Marx Brothers film At the Circus appears, in which Groucho plays a lawyer “Legal Eagle”.
Yet “Legal Eagle” seems to have become a fairly established term in the United States by the mid-1940s. The “corpse” quickly jumps to his feet – with a big smile on his face! It`s Perry Mason – and the tireless “legal beagle” has just solved one of the strangest cases of his career.