What happened to Roman law in the West after the empire fell in the 5th century CE? The Germanic tribes that carved out new kingdoms on Roman soil—the Visigoths, the Franks, the Lombards—brought their own customary laws with them. This led to the creation of fascinating hybrid legal codes that blended Germanic tradition with the lingering prestige of Roman law. This episode crosses the frontier into the world of the early medieval "barbarian" law codes. We explore the principle of "personality of the law," where a person was judged by the law of their own people, meaning a Goth and a Roman living in the same town would be subject to different legal systems. We examine the content of these codes, with their emphasis on monetary compensation (wergild) for physical injury and their use of trial by ordeal. These law codes represent a crucial moment of transition between the classical and medieval worlds. They show the fragmentation of the universal Roman legal system but also its remarkable persistence. In their own way, the barbarian kingdoms became the unlikely custodians of a simplified but living Roman legal tradition.