Murray's first contact when he moved to London was William Hamilton, a Scottish-born barrister who was said to be the first Scot to practise at the English Bar, and one of the few people who was qualified to act as a barrister in both England and Scotland. Hamilton had been one of Murray's sponsors when he joined Lincoln's Inn in 1724, and when Murray came to London, Hamilton helped find him a set of chambers at No. 1 Old Square. At this time, there was no formal legal education, and the only requirement for a person to be called to the Bar was for him to have eaten five dinners a term at Lincoln's Inn, and to have read the first sentence of a paper prepared for him by the steward. Thus, most of Murray's practical training came from reading the papers in Hamilton's chambers and listening to Lord Raymond speak in court, along with tutoring by Thomas Denison on how to write special pleadings. Murray also studied various texts, including the French "Ordinance de la Marine" (a predecessor to the Napoleonic Commercial Code), the works of Bracton and Littleton and "crabbed and uncouth compositions" on municipal law.