Manitoba's first lawyers came to the province as fully qualified members of the legal profession from other jurisdictions and were admitted to practice  upon proving their qualifications. The study of law in Manitoba in its earliest form consisted of five years of apprenticeship (three in the case of university graduates) under articles of clerkship to a practising lawyer. At the end of the period of articles, each student had to pass an examination prescribed by the Bar Society.

The University of Manitoba first became involved in legal education in 1885 when it established a three-year course of studies leading to the LL.B. degree. This course did not include instruction; it simply prescribed a reading program, with three annual examinations, which articled law students couId follow concurrently with the course prescribed by the Law Society. For the next quarter century roughly, the pattern of legal education in Manitoba changed very little. Small alterations were made from time to time, but the basic method of education continued to be apprenticeship supplemented by private study.

In the years 1911-12 the Law Society was prompted by the Law Students Association to provide a short series of lectures. In 1913, H. A. Robson, then Manitoba's Public Utilities Commissioner and a former judge of the Court of King's Bench, organized a considerably improved course of lectures and began to lay the plans for the establishment in the following year of a permanent law school modeled after the Osgoode Hall Law School of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

The Manitoba Law School was jointly sponsored by The University of Manitoba and the Law Society of Manitoba; both bodies took part in the planning from the beginning. In the summer of 1914 they entered into an agreement, subsequently endorsed by legislation, which provided for the creation of the School, offering a three-year course consisting of lectures and apprenticeship leading to both an LL.B. degree and a call to the Bar and admission to practice. Expenses of the School were shared equally by the two parent bodies, and its operations were supervised by a jointly appointed Board of Trustees. This arrangement between The University of Manitoba and the Law Society of Manitoba continued until 1966 when the Law School became the Faculty of Law of The University of Manitoba.

For most of its fifty-two years of existence the Manitoba Law School blazed its own trail.  In its early years it was an undisputed leader on this continent; it was a pacesetter in raising the pre-law qualifications to the present common requirement of at least two years university study, in adopting the three-year course of full-time study recommended by the Canadian Bar Association, and in reestablishing, after an unsuccessful trial period of the three-year course of full-time study, the combined lecture and apprenticeship program on an expanded four-year basis. Interestingly, when the Law School expanded its course of study to four years in 1927, it was still operating on a full-time study system. In its later years the Law School continued to operate on a combined lecture and apprenticeship system, until it was the only such law school in Canada, while law schools in other jurisdictions reconverted to a three-year course of full-time study. There is no dearth of written comment in praise, justification, and criticism of the School, particularly in connection with its later years when it resisted the general trend in other jurisdictions to reconvert to the three-year, full-time course of study. In 1962 a series of events commenced which led to the adoption by the Law Society of Manitoba and The University of Manitoba and their Board of Trustees of the Manitoba Law School of a scheme whereby the Law School would reconvert to a three-year course of full-time study and whereby the Manitoba Law School would be phased out of existence by the summer of 1966, its place to be taken by a faculty of law of The University of Manitoba.

The Faculty of Law presently offers programs of study leading to two degrees, the J.D. and the LL.M. The latter degree program was brought into existence in 1949 by the Manitoba Law School; it was substantially revamped by the Faculty of Law in 1968. There are truly countless Manitobans who have contributed to legal education in Manitoba over the years. Two names stand out, namely H. A. Robson and E. K. Williams. These men were the only two chairmen of the Board of Trustees of the Manitoba Law School, and their contribution has been suitably enshrined in the names of the new building housing the Faculty of Law and of the Faculty's new library.