Legal education

“ Mr. Finch has published a Selection of Cases on the English Law of Contract, Part I., and an inaugural address on Legal Education, its Aim and Method. The important features of this fourth stage of legal education in England are (a) the radical change in the source of instruction, — for it now begins to be given at universities by scholars holding university professorships, instead of in London by barristers under the auspices of the Inns of Court ”

“ In these less aristocratic and more prosaic days, however, he is obliged diligently to apply himself to study, and to pass, from time to time, regular and strict examinations, prescribed by the Council of Legal Education, so that his equipment is no longer left to chance, but is really measured with cold accuracy. ”

“ PRACTISING lawyers in so progressive a country as America are continually met with new devices, with new legal situations, with want of remedies, for which neither the text-books nor their legal education afford them precedent or direct advice ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The court found that 'The most extensive activities of the State Bar are those directed toward postgraduate education of lawyers,' and that 'Post-graduate education of lawyers is in the public interest because it promotes the competency of lawyers to handle the legal matters entrusted to them by those of the general public who employ them.' 10 Wis.2d at page 246, 102 N.W.2d at pages 412-413. ”

“ Those standards, which have been approved by a board of judges, scholars, and practitioners, are objective and demanding. They require specified experience as lead counsel in both jury and nonjury trials, participation in approved programs of continuing legal education, a demonstration of writing skills, and the successful completion of a day-long examination. Certification expires in five years unless the lawyer again demonstrates his or her continuing qualification. ”

“ Collective bargaining is likely to compel us to think over again the whole subject of juristic personality in Anglo-American law. Criminal law and procedure call for the best efforts of thoroughly trained common-law lawyers acquainted with the social science of today.... For much that we have had to study and to teach in the immediate past is already yielding in importance to these new elements in the legal system. ”

“ The evident want of some assistance in the rudiments of legal knowlege, has given birth to a practice, which, if ever it had grown to be general, must have proved of extremely perni-32-cious consequence: I mean the custom, by some so very warmly recommended, to drop all liberal education, as of no use to lawyers ”

“ 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. ”

“ But there are equally good legal reasons for our decision. In addition the subject matter almost compels us to act because public education is one of the most important services provided by state government. ”

“ Each citizen of a state promises, in the original compact, that he will promote, as far as lies in his power, all the conditions of the possibility of the state; hence, also, the condition just mentioned. This he can best do by educating children who may grow up to realize various ends of reason. The state has the right to make this education of children a condition of the state-compact, and thus education becomes an external, legal obligation, which the parents owe to the state. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Of recent years, however, there has been a change in the attitude towards the teaching of law. It has come to be recognized that our law is a changing and developing force, and that the adaptation of fundamental legal principles to the advancing demands of modern society, both through legislation and through judicial decision, furnishes a field for research and investigation which demands the highest type of scholarship and training. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only has the average lawyer become a less representative citizen, but a strictly legal training has become a less desirable preparation for the candid consideration of contemporary political problems. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are, of course, far from supposing that every British subject who can read is to peruse the vast 30 library which the British Acts of themselves compose; but we hold that education forms the only direct means through which written law, as a regulator of conduct, can be known, and that, in consequence, in its practical breadth and average aspect, it is only educated men who know it, and only uneducated men who are ignorant of it. And hence the derivation of the magistrate’s judicial right and duty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An incidental advantage—which is worth mentioning—of making legal instances the medium of instruction in practical logic, would be that people would [Pg 24] —not learn law, of course, in the present state of our system, but they would have their attention called in a direct and business-like way to the lawyer's point of view, and those features of procedure in which every man and woman in the land has so immediate an interest. ”

“ Lord Penzance further asks his readers: “Did you ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments, which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all its branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal profession.” ”

“ I have spent ten years as a teacher among the whites, and two among the blacks; and I must say that I accomplished more in those two years than in the ten—more in the way of giving instruction. I say it is too late to raise that question at all. It is already demonstrated. Let them be educated with broad culture. Let them have the training that will put them in possession of practical skill, such as shall win success. Let them have their own lawyers, well trained in legal lore, so that they shall be able—in that natural eloquence in which they excel—to carry conviction to dignified courts. ”

“ 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 money-making conception of our profession is not only erroneous, but ruinous; for you must remember, to begin with, that you are practising the science of justice.
If possible, get a thorough college education before you touch a law book. If you can get a college education, do not "read law" while you are at college. If you go to college, do not take what is known as the "scientific" course, or "physical" course. Take the classical course. Next to geometry and logarithms and the Bible, the best discipline preparatory to making you a lawyer is the translation of Latin. ”

“ But we can say this, that a thorough training in modern law is almost indispensable for any one who wishes to do good work on legal history. In whatever form the historian of law may give his results to the world—and the prejudice against beginning at the end is strong if unreasonable—he will often have to work from the modern to the ancient, from the clear to the vague, from the known to the unknown. ”

“ Of law, as a science, he ever expressed the deepest admiration, and an author who combines an accurate knowledge of the practical details of jurisprudence with the most philosophical views of legal principles, has quoted Dr. Johnson, as pronouncing the study of law "the last effort of human intelligence acting upon human experience." ”

“ There is another circumstance which facilitates the progress of the teacher. It is a fact that all this general progress has a direct and immediate bearing upon his pursuits. A lawyer may read in an evening an interesting book of travels, and find nothing to help him with his case, the next day, in court,—but almost every fact which the teacher thus learns, will come at once into use, in some of his recitations at school. We do not mean to imply by this that the members of the legal profession have not need of a great variety and extent of knowledge; they doubtless have. ”

“ These purposes and, to a certain extent, these problems, the student of law must investigate; to stand outside, refusing to touch them, invites fatal criticism. We should say, then, that the scientific treatment of law includes the analysis and classification of legal conceptions; inquiry into the origin and evolution of legal institutions; and the theory of legislation. Prof. Amos adopts this view, and it colors every chapter of his work. ”

“ Lectures on law to commercial students should be reduced to a minimum, and then they should confine themselves to very broad principles which need no lengthy exposition or to fields in which the students may be expected to have a general grasp but no very detailed knowledge. But such subjects as contracts, agency, bankruptcy, sales, insurance, negotiable instruments, and forms of business association should be taught thoroughly to the student in the classroom through the case method, in which each case is fully discussed by the class and from which discussion legal principles are evolved. ”

“ Underlying these cases, and underlying also the legislative judgments that have preceded the court decisions, has been a recognition that private education has played and is playing a significant and valuable role in raising national levels of knowledge, competence, and experience. ”

“ Scholars would add the tools of interdisciplinary scholarship: comparative politics, international relations, public policy analysis, theories of institutional behaviour, etc – to the tools of legal scholarship, defined in ‘New Directions’ terms to include socio-legal studies, postmodernist theory, critical legal studies, law in context, and so on. ”

“ A great number of the cases, too, which are raised for discussion in the law-books, appear to be rather possible than real, rather problematical cases proposed by a teacher to his students to be argued upon according to general principles, than as actual serious subjects for legal discussion. ”