Law student

“ The student has not only to make himself acquainted with the elements and principles of English law, maritime, civil and criminal, but he has to acquire a knowledge of the laws of the particular state in which he practices, and to know what the courts of the different states have decided, where he does not practice. ”

“ There is no such thing as being a good lawyer from merely reading law. You can't bolt it as we do food in this country. We must chew upon it. It must be well digested. You seem to have the right notion on this subject. I should judge so from two things: the distinction which you made between the reader and the student; and the fact that your appearance is that of the student. I am afraid, my young friend, that you overwork yourself. You look thin, and pale, and unhappy. You should be careful that your passion for study is not indulged in at the peril of your health. ”

“ Only a few of the men who choose that profession succeed in it: the qualities which make a man a great lawyer are rare and the space on the wool-sack is strictly limited. The Cambridge law student should be prepared for either fortune. The day may come when in the bitterness, of his soul he will confess that he is not going to succeed, when he is weary of waiting for that solicitor who never comes, when the prolonged and costly education seems thrown away. ”

“ I only contend that they cannot insure success to any law student who has not talent, industry, perseverance, and a taste for the profession; and that, to one who has all these elements of success, a diploma from the schools is not necessary. ”

“ Hence it may be a measure of policy with them, to introduce the student, in the first place, to the study of political law, in the hope of making on his raw and unpractised mind, such an impression, as may secure his approbation of the existing order of things. The faculty of investigating legal questions, and forming legal opinions, may almost be regarded as an acquired faculty; so that, in the earlier part of his researches, the student necessarily acquiesces in the doctrines which are pronounced ex cathedra by his teacher. ”

“ It will be our aim to develop the Review on the lines we have indicated, in the hope of deserving the support which we have already received. If we succeed, we shall endeavor to enlarge our field as much as is consistent with our plan. If we fail, we shall at least have the satisfaction of believing that our work has been honestly done in the interests of the Law School and of its alumni.
During the present year a new departure has been made in the line of student law-trials, which, owing to the fact that it bids fair to become a permanent feature of student work, is worthy of some comment. ”

“ The office of a practising lawyer was the only place in which the law could be learned, if at all. The eminent authority just mentioned thus sketched the process of legal training in his day: “It is a most melancholy state of things. There is nothing like education for law students now. ”

“ Let us demonstrate the application of the law again showing how interest may be developed in a specific college subject. Let us choose one that is generally regarded as so "difficult" and "abstract" that not many people are interested in it—philology, the study of language as a science. Let us imagine that we are trying to interest a student of law in this. As a first step we shall select some legal term and show what philology can tell about it. A term frequently encountered in law is indenture—a certain form of contract. ”

“ The great object of a Faculty of Law is to teach those who aspire to take part in public life jurisprudence, not as the art of jurisdiction, but in its connection with moral and social sciences, in its philosophical and historical aspect. In this relation, besides a Chair of PubHc Law, Chairs of Philosophy of Law, of Political Economy, of Commercial and of International Law, are necessary. They presuppose, of course, that the student has in the Faculty of Arts been well trained in the method of historical inquiry from a sociological point of view, and has had a sound general education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is, moreover, a significant fact that the faculties of the above-named institutions, while recommending to law students the optional study of political economy, constitutional history, taxation, physical science, English literature, and modern languages as conducive to a higher standard of legal culture, utterly fail to advise them to pursue courses in criminal anthropology, criminology, or penology. ”

“ But in Wall Street the young student whose ambition is to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States in some constitutional matter as soon as possible is apt to spend his early years in brief writing and then become a specialist in real estate, corporation, admiralty or probate law and perhaps never see the inside of a trial court at all, much less a police court, which, to the poor and ignorant, at any rate, is the most important court of any of them, since it is here that the citizen must go to enforce his everyday rights. ”

“ It is every thing to the student at law to get a right start; to lay the foundation well for future reading and practice. Very many lawyers, particularly in the state of New-York, get a knowledge of their profession after they are admitted. ”

“ One is struck with the value in many ways of such trials, provided they are not undertaken too frequently. The student of law, from the nature of his work, is barred from that varied intercourse with men, that personal element, we may call it, which renders the practice so fascinating, and any plan which makes it possible for the student to introduce something of this into his work is to be commended. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So difficult is it for a student to change the habits of life after the crucial years of college that not one man in twenty years—not one man in twenty years—who was satisfied in Harvard College with grades of "C" and lower gained distinction in the studies of Harvard Law School. ”

“ In 1829 he became a professor in Harvard Law-School. He was an authority on all legal questions in the United States, his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, The Conflict of Laws and Equity Jurisprudence being very valuable. He died at Cambridge, Mass., Sept 10, 1845. See Life by his son. ”

“ The law school, the proving ground for legal learning and practice, cannot be effective in isolation from the individuals and institutions with which the law interacts. Few students and no one who has practiced law would choose to study in an academic vacuum, removed from the interplay of ideas and the exchange of views with which the law is concerned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The boys worked like rabbits, and dug holes all over the field of archaic society; no difficulty stopped them; unknown languages yielded before their attack, and customary law became familiar as the police court; undoubtedly they learned, after a fashion, to chase an idea, like a hare, through as dense a thicket of obscure facts as they were likely to meet at the bar; but their teacher knew from his own experience that his wonderful method led nowhere, and they would have to exert themselves to get rid of it in the Law School even more than they exerted themselves to acquire it in the College. ”

“ Why are you not a lawyer?”
“Rosalie, I made an effort, many an effort, to get admitted to practice, at the bar of S——. I had thought myself well qualified, for I had studied legal science with what you call an attraction—a vocation for the profession. For several years past I had read law con amore; yet, through the want of familiarity with the technicalities of practice, I failed to get admitted as a practitioner before the court.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Graduates in Arts. To you, Graduates in Law, in Medicine and in Teaching, I will say but few words. Graduates in Law, the danger, which will chiefly beset you in applying the knowledge you have acquired to the active work of your profession is that of gradually ignoring the principles on which a sound system of Law is based. To avoid this you must remain always students of Law as the science of gradually perfecting the social relations of mankind. You must ever bear in mind what is the end of all Law, "the harmony of the world." ”

“ An address recently delivered before the Birmingham Law Students’ Society by Sir Edward Clarke, English Solicitor-General, [4] has given renewed vitality to the movement in England to break down the distinction between barristers and solicitors, and make the legal profession into “one body, each member of which should be entitled to do any part of the work of the profession.” The change is advocated as of benefit to the public, to barristers, and to solicitors. ”

“ That young man had really learned something worth far more than the cost of his course in the college of law.
There is, perhaps, no other of the so-called learned professions which is so exacting and which requires more devotion and study for its mastery. Some of the brightest men in this country have devoted a lifetime to the study and practice of law, only to have just entered its broad field as they have been compelled to lay down their work. How futile, then, would be the attempt to make every man his own lawyer! ”

“ The chemist, the physician, etc., studies his subject because he wants to become a chemist, physician, etc., but the lawyer studies law not because he wants to become a lawyer, but because he wants to become an official, and as he has no especial interest he chooses his state position in that branch in which he thinks he has the best prospects. It is a bitter truth and a general rule—that those who want to study law and the science of law are the exceptions, and that hence we have to acquire a real interest in our subject from laymen, from our experts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”