Law school

“ Candidates for the bar ordinarily prepared for practice by reading in a lawyer's office, a good old method that perhaps has some merits, but one which did not, save in the case of a teacher of exceptional qualifications, give a uniform preparation or an insight into the principles of legal philosophy. As the general level of education advanced, however, the advantages of some systematic instruction in law became more and more apparent, and it was not long after the establishment of the University before demands for a Law School began to be heard. ”

“ If the United States, or each State, had a school for the education of judges in which the course of study, in addition to a knowledge of the principles of law, aimed to fit the pupils to administer justice without much regard to mere technicalities or legal hairsplitting, and which kept in view, first and foremost, that the courts were for the benefit of the people at large, and not to furnish a living for lawyers, the gain to justice would be something akin to what modern inventions have given us in contrast with the methods of former generations. ”

“ In the first place, the object of a law school must be to teach law, and this is not quite the same thing as teaching the history of law. We should not wish to see a professor of law breaking and entering the close of the professor of history, though the result of our scheme of Triposes may be that legal history falls to the ground between two schools. Secondly, I believe that any one who aspires to study legal history should begin by studying modern law. ”

“ Above are three club-rooms, devoted to the use of the several law clubs in the school. With such accommodations the school will receive a new impetus.
The cause of legal education has advanced greatly within the memory of lawyers who are even now hardly of middle age. Twenty years ago law schools in this country were few in number and most of them poor in equipment. No examination, and but little study, was required as a condition for the degree of Bachelor of Laws; one of the oldest schools conferred the degree upon all students registered therein for a certain length of time,—one year. ”

“ As far as the study of law is concerned, we may answer at once that the known success of honor graduates of the Harvard Law School is one reason why even college undergraduates at Cambridge believe that law students should study law—hard and seriously. For the same reason, leading law-offices the country over give preference to honor graduates of law-schools.
But what is success in life? That is the first problem. It is one difficulty that confronts every one who attempts to speak with certainty about the meaning of education. There is no accepted definition of the aim of education. ”

“ Its main feature is that it insists on a properly graduated course of study extending over three years, two of which are to be undergone after the law student has taken the intermediate degree or B.A. or B.Sc. His progress is to be tested by two examinations, and provision is also made for an examination in Honours. Closely connected with the reform of the Law Course is the reform of the Law School. Indeed, the Committee which proposed the new scheme for the Law Course made proposals also for putting the Government Law School on a proper footing. ”

“ In dwelling on the advantages of the Law School as a seat of legal education, the Committee therefore rank side by side with the lectures and exercises of the professors the profitable opportunities afforded by the library and the fellowship of persons engaged in the same pursuits, all echoing to the heart of the pupil, as from the genius of the place, constant words of succor, encouragement, and hope. ”

“ But if you cannot get a college education, do not get discouraged. It is possible that you are an Abraham Lincoln, or a John Marshall, or some person like that; and if you are you will succeed anyhow. Even if you are not so highly gifted you can win in the law without a college education if you are naturally a lawyer and will work hard enough. If you have to choose between a law school and a college education, take the latter. But the training afforded by a clerkship in an active lawyer's office is more helpful than either. ”

“ The fact that a student of the common law proposes to devote a number of years to the study of the civil law is a significant one in its bearing on legal education. It may be that the civil law has been too long neglected.
The students of the Harvard Law School claim domiciles in twenty-eight different jurisdictions. If they practise in the same jurisdictions from which they come, the Massachusetts bar, already so largely made up of Law School bred men, will receive 82 additions. ”

“ Largely through its efforts, the American law schools have taken on a new character. The course of study has been both broadened and prolonged, and the attendance of the students has increased in full proportion to the additions to the facilities for obtaining a more thorough training in the Law schools.profession. When the association commenced its labours, those studying law in the offices of practising lawyers very largely outnumbered those found in the law school. ”

“ The law school is of older standing and maturer growth, at the same time that its aims and circumstances are of much the same general character as those that condition the schools of commerce; and it is therefore to be taken as indicating something of what must be looked for in the college of commerce if it is to do the work for which it is established. ”

“ LL.B. An abbreviation for Legum Baccalaureus, Bachelor of Laws. In American colleges, this degree is conferred on students who fulfil the conditions of the statutes of the law school to which they belong. The law schools in the different colleges are regulated on this point by different rules, but in many the degree of LL.B. is given to a B.A. who has been a member of a law school for a year and a half. ”

“ But in point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing. ”

“ Since then the advance in standards has been very rapid, and in 1899 Harvard placed its law school upon a graduate basis. Though but few others have emulated Harvard in this respect, the improvement in legal education during the past two decades has been marked. Of the 120 law schools today, the great majority are connected with colleges and universities, demand a high school diploma for admission, maintain a three-year course of study, and confer the degree of LL.B. Twenty-four per cent of the twenty thousand students are college graduates. ”

“ The tendency is toward bulky volumes. Meanwhile other subjects than constitutional law,—othervii branches of the law,—must be pursued. Multiplicity of subjects is characteristic of the curriculum whether at Law School or at College or University. Time is brief: studies are many. ”

“ Aside, too, from the excellent practice afforded to those who take part, such trials may be made a means of familiarizing those who witness them with the actual court practice of English and American courts. One other point suggests itself. The Law School has hitherto furnished nothing to attract the college students within its walls, and kindle an interest among them in the study of the profession which so many of them adopt. Does not this year’s experience show that these trials are adapted to serve just that purpose? ”

“ Already some States have required a law-school degree as a condition of admission to the bar, and the old haphazard law-office apprenticeship will eventually disappear, although the question of how far a man who is earning his living should be allowed to study law in his spare hours at a night law school69 whose standards must usually be lower than a full-time school remains as a difficult problem in a democratic country. Efficiency of training conflicts with equality of opportunity. A second service of the leading law schools is the modernization of the law through the production of books. ”

“ You know, I find that, first off, I found when I went to law school that there seems to be this requirement that in order to go to law school you have to have uh, you know, a stick up your butt and then law school finds the people that don’t have that and puts one there and then finds everybody and tries to pound it up there even farther. ”

“ The curriculum of legal subjects in which lectures are given and examinations held is calculated to give a student a sound fundamental knowledge of general principles, as well as an elementary acquaintance with the rules of modern English law. Jurisprudence, Roman law, Constitutional law and International law are taught, as well as the law of Real and Personal Property, the Law of Contract and Tort, Criminal law, Procedure and Evidence. But the law tripos and the law schools suffer from remoteness from the law courts, and from the exclusively academical character of the teaching. ”

“ For example, in no American law school of which I know is it possible to take courses in three systems of foreign law, and in America political economy and the related group of subjects would be taught by a separate faculty instead of as part of the law course. ”

“ There is no doubt that the United States have been in advance of England both in providing means of legal education and in requiring their use. The length of the course of study now established at our older Law Schools—three years—seems all that can reasonably be exacted, if a proper foundation of general discipline and knowledge has been previously laid. ”

“ The advanced work in Law is of a very special character. Most of the lectures in Law are intended for those reading for the Jurisprudence School, so that the candidate for the B.C.L. is thrown largely upon his own resources. Prof. Vinogradoff lectures on the History of Law and Comparative Jurisprudence, and also holds a seminar-class along these lines. But the bulk of the work for the degree must be done in private under the direction and supervision of the College Tutor. The examination for the B.C.L. is one of the most difficult University examinations. ”

“ Article 18 Schools shall employ full-time or part-time teachers to engage in the rule of law education, and may employ vice principals and out-of-school legal counsellors in charge of the rule of law education from judicial and law enforcement organs, legal education and legal service institutions, and other entities. ”

“ Take, again, the profession of the law. Our common sense tells us that we have too many lawyers and that thousands of them, thoroughly trained, are either eking out a bare existence or being compelled to work with their hands, or are turning to some other business in order to keep themselves from becoming objects of charity. The universities, the bar, the courts themselves have done little to bring this situation to the knowledge of young men who are considering entering any one of our multitude of law schools. ”

“ A satisfactory solution of the question might perhaps be arrived at by the transfer of the management of the school to the University. The matter is one which affects not merely the education of our law students, but the interest of the people of the whole Presidency. It is from the ranks of our successful law students that the ranks of our Judicial Service are largely recruited. ”

“ As early as 1647, the General Court, "to the end," as the preamble of the act declares, [59] "that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers in church and commonwealth," provided, under a penalty, that every township of fifty householders "shall appoint a public school for the instruction of children in writing and reading, and that every town of one hundred householders "shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as may be fitted for the university." This law has, in substance, continued down to the present times ”

“ But what would be the answer of those who deny these propositions?”
The Law School opens this year with 204 students, classified as follows: Graduates, 2; third-year, 31; second-year, 52; first-year, 80; special, 39. Those entering the School are 113 in number. These newcomers are drawn from different States and countries, as is shown below: Massachusetts, 50 ”

“ Measures shall be taken by law to promote the professionalism of judges, and the universities shall cooperate to this end, organizing their corresponding law schools' pensa to specialized studies in judicial practice. ”

“ Law-schools have been established, reform codes of law have been made, and certainly there is a manifest disposition on the part of the government to give the best system of justice to the people that can be found. ”

“ "All my reading and studying of them has taught me that law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask any lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is right. ”

“ Form these habits now: learn all that may be learned at your University, and bring all your acquisitions and your habits to the study of the law, which you say is to be your profession;—and when you come to this study, come resolved to master it—not to play in its shallows, but to sound all its depths. There is no knowing what a mind greatly and firmly resolved, may achieve in this department of science, as well as every other. Resolve to be the first lawyer of your age, in the depth, extent, variety and accuracy of your legal learning. ”

“ The benchers of the Inns of Court, until the revival towards the middle of the 19th century, had wholly ceased to concern themselves with the systematic teaching of law. The modern system of legal education may be said to date from the establishment, in 1852, of the council of legal education, a body of twenty judges and barristers appointed by the four Inns of Court to control the legal education of students preparing to be called to the bar. The most important feature is the examination which a student must pass before he can be called. ”