Bar examination

“ The first thing the ordinary woman hastens to do if she be summoned to appear in a court of justice is not, as might be expected, to think over her testimony or try to recall facts obliterated or confused by time, but to buy a new hat; and precisely the same thing is true of the female defendant called to the bar of justice, whether it be for stealing a pair of gloves or poisoning her lover. ”

“ They can afford to pay for the services of counsel, and their conviction is of vastly more importance to the community than that of their hirelings who actually sell the liquor over the bar. The barkeeper who violates the law and is caught, comes to trial in the Special Sessions, either pleads guilty or is convicted, and receives a fine which his employer promptly pays. The owner of the saloon thereupon discharges the defendant from his service and secures another barkeeper. ”

“ The aspiring barrister must remain a student for three years, and will have to pay nearly £200 in stamp duty and fees to his Inn. Exception is, however, made in the case of solicitors, who, under recent regulations, can be admitted to the Bar without delay on payment of the fees. Within the last fifteen years an examination has been instituted for all students except solicitors, the latter having been examined by their own society ”

“ The leaders of the Bar when I was admitted to it,—Charles Allen, Emory Washburn, Pliny Merrick, Benjamin F. Thomas, Peter C. Bacon,—would have been great leaders at any Bar in the United States, or on any circuit in England. Study at a law school is invaluable to the youth if he is to rise in his profession; but there is no law school like a court-house when such men are conducting trials. ”

“ The American bar, unlike the English, is not so constituted that a certain number of its members are professedly devoted in a special way to the trial of cases. The English barrister in active practice may almost be said to do nothing else. His standing and his income depend on his ability to try case after case in rapid succession. Others are responsible for their slow and careful preparation. He is responsible for their quick and effective dispatch when the preparation is ended. He becomes necessarily familiar with the technique of a trial at every point. ”

“ The lawyers or their assistants who have been lounging about the empty court-room, gossiping with one another and trying to evade the importunities of their clients, who insist upon speculating with them on the probable result, have been summoned to the bar. ”

“ I think it'll be no end of fun," was the merry reply. "One of us could be the prisoner, and the other the barrister who defends him. I'd better be the barrister, because I know more about English law than Selwyn does. And the furniture'll have to be the other counsel and the gentlemen of the jury. Sit over there, Charlie, near that railing, and we'll make believe it's the bar. The only trouble is the barrister will have no gown and wig. ”

“ It is not unheard of to see a prisoner actually at the bar awaiting sentence while the judge [Pg 191] upon the bench holds a sort of open levee, free to all comers, in which the prisoner's lawyer, his wife, the officer who made the arrest, the complainant, and the district attorney (and sometimes others who have far less claim to be heard) endeavor to bring the judge to their own particular way of thinking, and harangue him and each other in tones by no means always either deferential or amicable. ”

“ Nor is any barrister permitted to hold direct communication with his client; he must receive his instructions from a solicitor, who acts as an intermediary. “Youth eats his way to the bar.” This curious custom of ”eating dinners" is a survival of an old legal way of insisting that students should be resident at the Inns of Court. Before a man can be called to the bar, he must keep twelve terms, of which there are four each year. ”

“ There is no real security to the public against those errors, except in the intelligence and education of the barrister. If the bar be incapable of estimating aright the weight and value of medical evidence, one or other of two consequences necessarily follows—either this evidence is neglected, and kept altogether out of view, or, if acted upon, it is as likely to damage as to serve the ends of justice. ”

“ Fortunately the sight of a woman, save of the very lowest class, at the bar of justice is rare. The number of cases where women of good environ [Pg 302] ment appear as defendants in the criminal courts in the course of a year may be numbered upon the fingers of a single hand, and, although the number of female defendants may equal ten per cent of the total number of males, not one-tenth of the women brought to the bar of justice have had the benefit of an honest bringing up and good surroundings. ”

“ The multitude of prisoners who are unable to employ counsel have created a bevy of lawyers, abundantly able to look out for the interests of petty offenders, who stand or sit near the bar and are assigned by the court to the various defendants. A whispered fifteen seconds' conversation with their unfortunate client and they are enabled to take charge of the case. Long experience has made them almost as expert in estimating human nature as the judges themselves, and they are familiar with every trick of the trade which may raise a "reasonable doubt." ”

“ To make amends, however, I have been so fortunate as to form acquaintance with some gentlemen of the bar, who possess enlarged minds and general knowledge: their conversation is of the greatest use and pleasure to me. But many barristers here are men who live entirely among themselves, with their heads in their green bags, and their souls narrowed to a point: mere machines for drawing pleas and rejoinders. ”

“ Unless the barrister has sufficient medical knowledge to be able to appreciate the force, or to see the fallaciousness of the medical evidence, the administration of justice can scarcely ever derive any solid advantages from the science of medicine. I believe I pronounce no libel on the members of the bar, when I assert, that, with few exceptions, they come to the Profession, both in England and here, and grow old in it, without the knowledge necessary to manage medico-legal inquiries. ”

“ The court and all present adjourned to the bar of the saloon to drink and joke at the criminal's expense. Ridicule is often a severer scourge than stripes. Regardless of the reckoning, and of the convict's ability to pay, drink after drink was called on and poured down the throats of the jovial assemblage until all, including judge, jury, and executioner became more engrossed in the pleasing pastime than in watching the prisoner, who, taking advantage of the opportunity, slipped out, packed his little property and was soon over the hills and out of sight. ”

“ Bar could be light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory—in his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man; and he must get that jury-man over, if he could. ”

“ A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar; lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have actually fallen dead as they stood pleading,—victims of the fearful pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. ”

“ There is just the same rough familiarity, the same general ardour of character, the same kind of unwritten code of morals and manners, the same kind of public opinion expressed in exactly the same blunt, unmistakable manner.' It would astonish outsiders if they could hear the remarks sometimes addressed by the British barrister to his learned brother—especially on circuit. The bar, he concludes, 'are a robust, hard-headed, and rather hard-handed set of men, with an imperious, audacious, combative turn of mind,' sometimes, though rarely, capable of becoming eloquent. ”

“ The present century has produced an even greater number of barristers who have achieved eminence, and are able to say with honest pride that they are the first gentlemen mentioned in their pedigrees; and so thoroughly has the bar become an open profession, accessible to all persons [26] who have the means of gentlemen, that no barrister at the present time would have the bad taste or foolish hardihood to express openly his regret that the members of a liberal profession should no longer pay a hurtful attention to illiberal distinctions. ”

“ It is under the guidance of these Committees that the Inns of Court have gained and maintained their position through the centuries, training the successive generations of barristers in the high traditions of honour and ability characteristic of the English Bar, and imparting to their youthful apprentices at the law, through the social system of ‘keeping terms,’ the unwritten rules of right conduct in the legal profession. ”

“ No man ever attains a position at the Bar in which he can afford to despise the opinion of his fellow-men. The eulogies of public journals, even the praise and patronage of attorneys, are of no worth compared with the respect of the Bar. As a French advocate wrote: “A solid reputation proceeds only from the Court.”
Charles Russell, who stood on a somewhat lonely eminence at the head of his profession, and dealt with the affairs of his fellows in a very rough-handed and independent manner, was at heart very jealous of the good opinion of the Bar. ”

“ A few, more respectably clothed and less vicious of aspect, sit writing at a table inside the bar, while a dozen or more punch-faced policemen, affecting an air of superiority, drag themselves lazily through the crowd of seedy humanity, looking querulously over the railing encircling the dock, or exchanging recognitions with friends. ”

“ Often enough he is a model husband and father. So, too, may be your forger, gambler, swindler, burglar, highwayman, or thief,—any in fact except the real moral pervert; and of course murder is entirely compatible on occasion with a noble, dignified and generous character. "There is nothing essentially incongruous between crime and culture." The prosecutor who begins by loathing and despising the man sitting at the bar may end by having a sincere admiration for his intellect, character or capabilities. This by way of defence to crime in general. ”

“ Crewe. A lawyer will prove that black is white if he is paid for it. In fact, I understand that, according to the etiquette of the bar, they have got to do it. A barrister has to abide by his brief and leave his personal feelings out of account."
"That's so. Theoretically he is an officer of the Court, and his services are supposed to be at the call of any man who is in want of him and can afford to pay for them. ”

“ When the case is finally called and the defendant takes his seat at the bar after a lapse of anywhere from six months to a year or more after his arrest, the first question for the district attorney to investigate is whether or no the person presenting himself for trial be in point of fact the individual mentioned in the indictment. This is often a difficult matter to determine. "Ringers"—particularly in the magistrates' courts—are by no means unknown. Sometimes they appear even in the higher courts. ”

“ I took my seat among the lawyers, but felt as a mere spectator, not having a suit in progress or prospect, nor having any idea where business was to come from. In the course of the morning a man was put at the bar, charged with passing counterfeit money, and was asked if he was ready for trial. ”

“ New Court, Middle Temple. barristers are generally drawn from a much higher social level than solicitors. Individual merit is, somewhat erroneously perhaps, supposed to be as great a factor for success as interest, and this, together with other considerations that we have already alluded to, induces a large proportion of the most accomplished University graduates to devote themselves to the Bar in preference to any other profession. University men, however, are not the only aspirants to the Woolsack, whose first step is to obtain a call to the Bar. ”

“ About one-third of the floor is allotted to spectators, and supplied with benches of penitential severity; the remaining space is occupied by a series of curved tables set in a horse-shoe, and by a raised platform, railed off from the auditorium, as I may call it, and supporting in successive gradations the clerk’s desk, on a very long, narrow table, and the judge’s table and easy-chair. At either end of the table on which the clerk’s desk was placed was a bar, representing in one case the witness stand, and in the other the prisoner’s box ”

“ Bar’s knowledge of that agglomeration of jurymen which is called humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally convenient instrument, and Physician’s plain bright scalpel, though far less keen, was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together, in threescore years and ten. ”

“ Again the loud voices of men in angry strife arose in the bar-room. I did not return there to learn the cause, or to witness the fiend-like conduct of the men, all whose worst passions were stimulated by drink into the wildest fervor. As I was entering my room, the thought flashed through my mind that, as Green was found there, it needed only the bare suggestion that I had aided in his concealment, to direct toward me the insane fury of the drunken mob.
"It is not safe to remain here." ”