Michael Smith was born in England. England forms part of a legal system in which the profession has long been divided between barristers and solicitors. Solicitors were usually called attorneys until 1875, while barristers belong to one of the four Inns of Court in London, which are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales.
Smith's education included Trent Polytechnic and Saint John's College. Trent Polytechnic was granted polytechnic status in 1970, when the merged Nottingham institutions were brought together under that name and funded by councils in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire. Its roots extended back to the Nottingham Government School of Design, founded in 1843, and the polytechnic merged with the Nottingham College of Education in 1975.
The institution was renamed Nottingham Polytechnic in 1988 and became Nottingham Trent University in 1992, when polytechnics became eligible for full university status under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.
Smith's documented professional career centres on his work as a partner of TETHER. He was admitted to the bar in England and Wales in 1988, a qualification that places a lawyer within the country's traditionally divided legal profession.
Barristers in England and Wales are called to the bar through the Inns of Court, and the regulation of the profession changed over time. The Inns and the Bar Council regulated barristers until 2006, when the Bar Standards Board was created as a separate regulatory body.
