Upon graduation, he declined an offer to clerk for the United States Supreme Court, and opened his own practice.
Based upon the reputation of this treatise, Beale was offered the post of assistant professor at Harvard Law School in 1892.
During his career at Harvard Law School, Beale was a renowned and influential legal scholar.
During his two-year tenure (a leave of absence from Harvard), Beale hired numerous faculty and established Chicago's law school as "one of the best in the country," garnering Beale honorary degrees from Chicago and the University of Michigan.
[4] Chicago continues to award the Joseph Henry Beale prize for outstanding performance in legal research and writing to first-year students every year.