During the frontier era a lot of procedures were a lot simpler then. Take for instance taking the bar examination to become an attorney-at law. For a brief time in the early 1860s the Honey Lake Valley had two Justice Courts—one for the Nevada Territory and the other for the State of California. That is a complicated story in itself. It did require practicing attorneys to have a license to in each jurisdiction, just as one has to due today.

Susanville’s founder, Isaac Roop (1822-1869) wore many hats, and one of those being an attorney. Since Roop was a high profile person back in the day, there is quite a bit of documentation about him. One item that shows a lot, was his interesting wit. A perfect example occurred when he took the Nevada Bar examination. At that hearing a lawyer attempted to provide Roop with some assistance. The bar examination was fairly simple and one of the more difficult questions was the definition of a corporation.  The Carson attorney informed Roop that: “A corporation is a creature of the law, having certain powers and duties of a natural person.” When Judge Gordon Mott asked Roop to define a corporation, Roop replied: “A corporation is a band of fellows without any soul, of whom the law is a creature, who have some powers and take a great many more, and entirely ignore the statutory duties imposed on them.”  Thus, with that remark, Roop was admitted to practice law in the Nevada Territory.

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