Malone's final examination at Trinity was in the Michaelmas term in 1761, and he received his BA degree at the following Commencement on 23 February 1762. As only one of three, he achieved the top mark (). The decision to study law was an obvious choice: his father, uncle, and grandfather had all been Irish Barristers. He'd received—on payment of £3 6s 8d—admittance to the Inner Temple in London in 1761, but did not begin his law studies until the new year in 1763. The interval was spent in Dublin reading, and he quickly applied to become a Reader of the Trinity College Library. Martin speculates that he spent his time reading "possibly law although probably also literature". Malone probably entered the Inner Temple in January 1763, but few records survive of his studies there; except that he was "invited to come to the bench table" in the commons—an honour Peter Martin describes as comparable to becoming a Warden in a guild—on 10 May 1763. Outside schoolwork he published satirical articles about the government and on the abuse of the English language, and made corrections to the text in his copy of a new edition of Jonathan Swift's correspondence. He was admitted to the Inner Temple the same year as James Boswell—a coincidence Martin thinks "literary historians cannot fail to wonder at"—but there is nothing to indicate that they ever crossed paths there. More significantly, in 1764, Malone's close friend Thomas Southwell and his father Edmund introduced Malone to Samuel Johnson, whose quarters on Inner Temple Lane were close to his own lodgings. Martin describes it as “…the most important meeting of Malone's life" and he became an "…ardent follower of Johnson's and, Boswell excepted, the most enthusiastic defender and celebrator of Johnson's writings and life." Malone's friendship with Johnson lasted until the latter's death in 1784. Although Malone failed to write down his conversations with Johnson, and none of his letters on the subject to John Chetwood have been found, Martin speculates that Shakespeare must have been among their topics of conversation, as Johnson was just then finishing up his great edition of Shakespeare that he had begun in 1756. They would have found other common interests in the law and Ireland, as Johnson would soon start work as private secretary to the English statesman and Irish politician William Gerard Hamilton. For Hamilton he compiled notes on the Corn Laws that Malone in 1809 would publish, along with two of Hamilton's speeches in the Irish House of Commons and some other miscellaneous works, under the title "Parliamentary Logick".