In 1627, Sweden adopted a trainee system as a means to give futureofficials and judges some practical skills supplementing the theore-tical university studies in law. With time, this practical legal learningand training took place partly at appellate courts, partly at thehousehold of rural first-instance district judges (häradshövding).Their manors became sorts of legal learning centres for lawyersaspiring for a career in the judicature. These nineteenth-centuryjudges’ households housed staff employed by the judge, perma-nent or ad hoc scribes and clerks, as well as law students learningabout the law and legal skills. Wives and children could also helporganize or perform the legal work as well as learn law and legalskills there. Legal cases and questions were discussed at meals atthe judge’s manor, where his library and the district’s archive weresituated. In modern terms, the judge’s household became a legalservice and training centre. This article investigates who receivedlearning in the households of Finnish nineteenth-century ruraljudges, what this learning included, as well as how and fromwhom this learning took place. The main sources include egodocu-ments – private letter collections and autobiographical texts.