No persuasion would induce him to return to his chambers in the evening, according to the practice then in vogue.

After the first year or two of the period during which he called himself a barrister he gave up even the pretence of reading law, and spent many more hours under the gallery of the House of Commons, than in all the Courts together.

The person who knew him best said of him: "Throughout life he never really applied himself to any pursuit that was against the grain." Nothing is more characteristic of the man than the contrast between his unconquerable aversion to the science of jurisprudence at the time when he was ostensibly preparing himself to be an advocate, and the zest with which, on his voyage to India, he mastered that science in principle and detail as soon as his imagination was fired by the prospect of the responsibilities of a law-giver.
He got no business worth mention, either in London or on circuit.
Zachary Macaulay, who was not a man of the world, did what he could to make interest with the attorneys, and, as a last resource, proposed to his son to take a brief in a suit which he himself had instituted against the journal that had so grossly libelled him.

"I am rather glad," writes Macaulay from York in March 1827, "that I was not in London, if your advisers thought it right that I should have appeared as your counsel.

Whether it be contrary to professional etiquette I do not know; but I am sure that it would be shocking to public feeling, and particularly imprudent against adversaries whose main strength lies in detecting and exposing indecorum or eccentricity.