Immediately after his election he went to Springfield and was admitted to the bar on September 9, 1836. His name first appears upon the list of the attorneys and counsellors-at-law published at the opening of the next term, March 1, 1837. As there was no lawyer in the neighborhood of New Salem, and none nearer than Springfield, Lincoln had obtained a little practice in petty cases before the village magistrate, and it is stated that, poor as he was, he never accepted a fee for such services because he felt that he was fully paid by the experience.
For a long time he was in doubt as to the expediency of abandoning his work as surveyor, which brought him from twelve to fifteen dollars a month, for the uncertain income of a lawyer, for he was still burdened by debt, and was constantly called upon for money by his step-mother and step-brother; but John T. Stuart, with whom he had been associated in politics and in the Black Hawk War, and who had proved to be a true friend, offered him a partnership, and Stuart was one of the leading lawyers of the State. Therefore, Lincoln decided to take the chances, and, on April 15, 1837, rode into Springfield, says his friend Joshua Speed, "on a borrowed horse, with no earthly property save a pair of saddle-bags containing a few clothes."
His first case was that of Hawthorne vs. Woolridge, his first fee was three dollars, and he made his first appearance in court in October, 1836. We do not know the details. He created a sensation the following summer, and for the first time revealed some of the characteristics which afterwards made him famous by his merciless pursuit of a rascal named Adams who had swindled the widow of one Joseph Anderson out of some land. His treatment of this case advertised him far and wide in the country around Springfield as a shrewd practitioner and a man of tireless energy, and it doubtless brought him considerable business. The account-book of Stuart & Lincoln is still preserved, and shows that their fees were very small,--not exceeding sixteen hundred dollars for the year and seldom more than ten dollars in a case; while many of them were traded out at the town groceries, and, in the case of farmers, were paid in vegetables, poultry, butter, and other produce. But that was the custom of the time, and at that date a fee of one hundred dollars was as rare as one of ten thousand dollars now.