When he found that his son would not be an engineer, Mr Thomas Stevenson very naturally wished him to have a profession to fall back upon should literature not prove a success, and it was agreed that he should read for the Bar. Louis, therefore, about the end of 1871, entered the office of the firm which is now known as Messrs Skene, Edwards, & Garson, W.S. The late Mr Skene, LL.D., was then senior partner of the firm. Another partner was the father of Mr J. R. P. Edwards, who has kindly supplied the following very interesting facts about Robert Louis Stevenson while he was undergoing his legal training in his office.
'Mr Stevenson entered the office, which was then in 18 Hill Street, in 1871, and left it about the middle of the year 1873, and was afterwards called to the Bar. His position in the office was neither that of a clerk nor of an apprentice, but merely of a person gaining some knowledge of business. He never received any salary, and, as is usual with aspirants for the Bar, his position was in no way subject to the ordinary office discipline. After searching through papers which were written in the office during the time Stevenson was in the office, I find a good many papers which were written by him, but they are all merely copies of documents, and I can find no trace of any deeds which were actually drawn up by him. This is no doubt accounted for, firstly, because he was not experienced enough in the drafting of deeds, and, secondly, because he may have found the somewhat dry intricacies of conveyancing, which are for the most part governed by hard and fast rules of law, foreign to his marvellous imagination.
'I have not been able to trace any of the staff of the office who were in it with Robert Louis Stevenson, with the exception of two men, who seem to remember little about him, but they said that he was very reserved and kept very much to himself. One of the men did not even know that he was the great Stevenson. The other man, however, said that he remembered that Stevenson had, as he described it to me, "an awful notion of the Pentland hills, and was that fond of talking about them." I believe he was very fond of scribbling pieces of writing on odd pieces of paper in his spare moments, but, unfortunately, I can find no trace of these; but that is not to be wondered at, as the firm have removed to two different houses since Stevenson was in the office.