Re:You come in here with a head full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer
yeah, but..
Thomas Canton (Historian), claims, that if you time travel, and drag a lawyer from 14C. england, and bring him back to the US, Canada, or any other country that has english common law (civil law, not criminal) his ability to practice would only be limited by language, not the knowledge of law.
So, in the past 500 years, most of english common law, has remained largely unchanged, even moving it thousand of miles, has had little impact, but language is a much more living thing than the law.
Language changes, new words get created, old words drop from use. We needed new words in the americas for new things that we came across, and english was enriched by hundreds of native american words. (and some, like possumn, moved from US east coast, to south america, to austrailia- for similar (and genitically related animals). and austrailian aboriginal words for things are known to me; i know what a walk about is, and a diggerydoo, or a wallaby.
and there are words, like amok, that we took (from one of the indonesian languages) because we had no single word for the concept-- but common law in US didn't incorpate american indian practices for settling disputes over land or chattle, or wills. (and 'goverments' existed in the Northeast, Northwest, and in Mexico, Mezo and South Americas--they collected taxes, had 'kings' or elected rulers, laws, courts, and penalties. None of these customs are part of common law anywhere in US (Louisina still has remants of French common law (Napolionic code), but there are no remants of any indian laws in our civil law.)
but common law didn't need to change in the american frontier, or in the penal colonies of australia, it worked just fine.
