The question of reform provoked a great deal of public debate in the eighteenth century. Philosophes, physiocrats, agronomists, and populationists all argued for the necessity of profound institutional change, claiming it would bring about national regeneration. Seeking to solidify its tax base and bring more prosperity to the kingdom, the monarchy implemented many of their suggestions for reform. A few minor national legal reforms succeeded, such as an increase in the authority of presidial courts, and a procedural change allowing royal courts to try serious criminal cases after the seigneurial judge had completed the investigation. But because of resistance by magistrates in the kingdom's parlements, the most ambitious attempt, the standardization of inheritance law and the form of testaments, went nowhere, and the overall verdict with respect to legal reform is unimpressive.

Seigneurial justice did not escape the eighteenth-century reform impulse. Many legal theorists were deeply critical of seigneurial justice, generally favoring the abolition of these local courts that they associated with innumerable abuses. And these jurists seem to have had the ear of the royal government–certainly by the 1780s the royal ministry was favorable to the notion, and the royal coup d'état of 1788 that abolished the parlements was clearly designed to cause seigneurial courts rapidly to wither away. Despite the considerable volume of books, pamphlets, and tracts that demanded legal reform, however, the eighteenth century saw no major national reforms of civil procedure, and no substantial national institutional changes affected seigneurial justice.