three "learned" professions represented the acme of intellectual effort, when trade and finance, for lack of our modern means of quick communication and transportation, must be satisfied with little triumphs, the lawyer was inevitably one of the big men of his community, the "guide, philosopher, and friend" of the grown-ups and the marvel of the tiny tots, of whom it might well have been said,

"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew

That one small head could carry all he knew."

But with the advent of modern inventions, and the gradual widening of the intellectual horizon, the three R's and the three "learned" professions lost their supremacy, and were forced to do battle with lusty competitors, rushing in from every side, insistent upon recognition as equals, if not superiors. became inextricably complex, its problems multiplied, its demands broadened, and the task of maintaining justice became Herculean. The old machinery of the law was no longer adequate, and a readjustment became imperative.

Life

To-day this readjustment is still in progress, and only time can tell the outcome; but it goes without saying that the lawyer's contribution to the solution. of present-day problems will depend, in large part, upon his training.

We live and move and have our being in an atmosphere of law, and none but the anarchist would even suggest the possibility of organized society without law. So general is the recognition of this fact that theories and vagaries, often fantastical in the extreme, are sought to be foisted upon the public through the medium of laws made by our legislatures, and well-meaning people not infrequently ask the state, through its statutes, to usurp the position of the church

and enforce merely moral obligations. Journalists, statesmen, and political econ omists may theorize to their hearts content; but let them reach the point where their schemes are to be put into practice, and their common resort is to the law.

Little wonder, then, that law and lawyers are often condemned for the follies of fanciful reformers, whose chimerical schemes deserve an odium which is unfortunately visited upon the innocent agents rather than upon the responsible authors. But this fact only emphasizes the necessity of sound training for those who make our laws, and particularly for those lawyers who serve as members of the legislature.

The task of the judge on the bench. no less than that of the advocates con

tending before him, is frequently complicated by the dishonesty, forgetfulness, or stupidity of parties and witnesses, who somehow escape the popular condemnation they deserve, and public indignation on account of the miscarriage of justice is visited upon the law and its votaries. Mistakes of court and counsel, sometimes unavoidable, sometimes due to sheer ignorance, further complicate the situation, and emphasize the truth that, whether as legislator, advocate, counselor, or judge, the lawyer of to-day should be satisfied with nothing less than the highest attainable grade of training. This training falls naturally into four divisions, which we may designate as Preliminary, Theoretical, Practical, and Ethical.

Speaking of the importance of better preliminary training antecedent to the study of law, the American Bar Association's Committee on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar said, in its report for 1907 (Proceedings A. B. A. 1907, p. 520):

"It ought to be the ambition of the bar of the United States, if it has lost its influence and prestige, to take such measures as may be necessary to prevent any further decline in its influence and to regain the prestige which it once possessed. In order to accomplish this it is essential that the standard of legal education be advanced, as has been the case in the other professions, as well as in the education of the people. This Association may not safely disregard the opinion of Mr. Justice Brewer in 1905 when he declared:

"If our profession is to maintain its prominence, if it is going to continue the great profession, that which leads and directs the movements of society, a longer course of preparatory study must be required. A better education is the great need and the most important reform. That which I wish alone to emphasize is the need of securing in some way to every one admitted to practice the benefit of a preparation therefor far surpassing that which most young lawyers now enjoy.'

"It was said by Locke that of the men we meet, nine parts often are what they are good or bad, useful or not-by their education. That is emphatically true of the class to which we belong. Mr. Justice Brewer once said to this Association: "There is no place anywhere on the face of the earth for a cheap lawyer.' The statement may well be changed so as to read: "There is no place anywhere on the face of the earth for an uneducated lawyer.' That is what he meant, for he told us at the same time that a higher education was the great need of the profession. The uneducated lawyer is always a cheap lawyer, although in the end always dear both to his clients and to the public. A

self-respecting profession must always be concerned as to the education of its members.

"In the past twenty years great progress has been made in elevating the standards of legal education in the United States. Many one-year schools have been changed into two-year schools, and the two-year schools into three-year schools. Many schools which had no entrance requirements then now require their students to have had a high school course, and some few are already demanding more than that. Many State Boards of Law Examiners have been established, and the Bar examinations. have been made more nearly what they should be. Yet much still remains to be accomplished."

This Committee also reported that more than a high school education should be required for admission, and quoted with approval the following extract from the report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1892 (Proceedings A. B. A. 1892, p. 523):

"Admission to the bar in all continental countries of Europe is obtained through the universities, which are professional schools for the four learned professions-theology, medicine, law, philosophy. *

and

While in England and America the erroneous idea is still predominant that a collegiate education need not necessarily precede professional study, in continental Europe it is made a conditio sine qua non."

Whether the recommendation of the Commissioner and the Committee should be immediately accepted is much disputed. It is true that the American Bar Association in 1907 adopted a resolution recommending that the law schools should require from their matriculates completion of two years of college work,

Judge Franklin M. Danaher, who was for fifteen years a member of the New York State Board of Law Examiners, and assisted during that time in the examination of twenty thousand applicants, said, in a paper which he read in 1909 before the American Bar Association's section on Legal Education (Proceedings A. B. A. 1909, p. 785):

We

"Primarily, no person should be allowed to begin the study of the law unless he has at least a high school education, or its equivalent, as defined by state educational authority. Our experience is that a high school educational requirement is high enough and practically sufficient, and the extreme limit of what we can get. An examination of our records show that there is very little, if any, difference in the percentage of high school graduates and collegiates. cannot make the profession an aristocracy, nor keep therefrom the many ambitious young men who seek its fatuous wealth and fame, and to ask for more than the high school requirement would be to raise a genuine opposition to all rules and a clamor which would prevent the getting of even that concession. We lay particular stress upon the condition that the educational requirement should be possessed prior to the commencement of the study of law. One reason is that a student cannot divide his time and attention between his work in obtaining his pre-educational conditions and his law studies. One must, of necessity, give way to the other, with the practical result that the law work will be neglect ed until the educational condition is worked off, to the general demoralization of the student, who will come to his examinations unprepared and illy fitted to enter upon the practice of his profes

cessity of some pre-educational qualification. In addition it has this practical merit-it will be a discourager, and will prevent many uneducated and inefficient persons from beginning the study of the law. The time and effort required to obtain, after eighteen years of age, a high school education, or its equivalent, will be almost prohibitive, and will certainly decrease the number of applicants, and thus render competition at the bar less deadly, tend to make the profession reasonably safe and sure as a means of livelihood, make it more honest, and improve its conditions and general morale."

In his report for the year 1909 the New York Commissioner of Education says:

"In January, 1909, the New York State Bar Association appointed a committee of three to consider the recommendations of the American Bar Association relative to legal education.

"The second resolution recommends 'the adoption of a rule making it a necessary condition of admission to the bar that the candidate shall have an education equivalent at least to that required for graduation from a high school.'

"The third resolution states that, in approving a high school education as a minimum requirement in general education, the 'Association entertains the opinion that the interests of the profession and of the state would be promoted if all the candidates for admission to the bar should be required to have an education equivalent to at least two years of a college course.' This third resolution plainly commits the American Bar Association to the fourth principle of the National Association of State Universities in their attempt to define the standard American University.

"Commenting on the good to come from the adoption of resolution 2, the State Board of Law Examiners says:

“Even that, we think, demands too much. With Massachusetts, for instance, and other states, having no educational requirements for admission to the bar, and New York laboring for 27 years to reach the high school preliminary educational requirements, how can we expect public opinion in many of the states at once and without preparation to sustain the establishment of a high school standard, where no educational test has ever existed?'

"New York has one of the best secondary school systems in the world, with either a high school or a registered academy or the means of obtaining a high school education within the reach of every boy in the state; yet New York began with a simple educational requirement in the premises in 1881, and did not reach the present high school standard until 1908.

"There are many states in which it is practically impossible or very difficult to obtain a high school education, and for that reason it would not only be unfair, but contrary to public opinion and impracticable, to exclude all students in such states from admission to the bar. It would be better to make haste slowly, and for those interested in raising the standards to ask primarily that all states which have no educational requirements for admission to the bar establish a simple and easily reached standard as a beginning, in the hope that they will ultimately reach the high school requirement, and that those which have less than a high school requirement should move speedily towards adopting it.

"Commenting on the third resolution the State Board of Law Examiners says: ""Theoretically this resolution

is

right, but we do not think that all candidates for admission to the bar should be required to have an education equivalent to at least two years of a college course; that is, two years beyond high school. There is a practical side to this proposition as well as a theoretical one. The proposition to exclude from the bar all the bright and ambitious young men whose environment will not permit them to get beyond high school or to go to college may be idealistic; but, if it is. it is also impracticable. A high school education is practically sufficient and sufficiently prohibitory.'

The situation is still further complicated by the reluctance of many educa tors to unduly prolong the age at which the young lawyer may establish himself. For instance, Professor H. E. Armstrong, a member of the Mosely Educational Commission, sent from England to the United States in 1903, says (U. S. Commissioner of Education Report for 1904, p. 1599):

"A course of study prolonged to an age bordering on thirty, rather than twenty, implies a most serious limitation on the period during which the individual exercises independence. It casts an improper burden on parents, and it postpones the age of marriage unduly."

Governor Baldwin, of Connecticut, has taken a similar view, and in an article written some years ago, while a professor at Yale Law School, he said (U. S. Commissioner of of Education Report 1904, p. 1686):

"What is the age at which a student who has decided upon what is to be the occupation of his life should enter upon the special preparation for it?

"It is clear that such a decision cannot reasonably be made or recognized until he has at least neared the stage of manhood. Nor should the door of pro

fessional education be opened to any one who has not received so much of secondary education as is necessary to equip him for the common duties of an American citizen. The man must be shaped before the lawyer.

"Most law teachers will probably agree that the study of law is best begun by the ordinary man at the age of 20 or 21. If he undertakes it earlier, he is apt to be found lacking in mental discipline and general information. If he undertakes it later, he is apt to feel it irksome to learn the elements and grammar of a new science, which is also an art, and to give undue emphasis to that part of it which most resembles whatever may belong to the studies he has last pursued.

A man must begin his legal education at 20, if he would complete it by 23 or 24, and to compel him against his will to defer beyond that his entry upon the practice of his profession is to wrong both him and the community. He has been denied the freedom that belongs to manhood. He has been forced to exchange a year of practical experience at the bar for a year of theoretical instruction in studies for which he did not care. The community also has lost a year of service from an educated citi

zen.

"The time has come when we must confess that our American university system has attempted the impossible. It has aimed at adding to the education furnished at the English university the education furnished at the German university, and at requiring both from all. The American people have been strangely patient under this strain. They are patient no longer. They are glad that those whose life is to be that of a scholar should have these ample opportunities for culture. They are determined that

those of their sons who are to live less among books and boys than among men should begin their life work in time to reap some of its rewards before the flush and joy of youth are past. There should be some chance for a man of 25, although he be devoted to a learned profession, to have a wife and home. One of our leading medical journals has recently declared that the existing state of things is right, and that young men who enter the professions must recognize the fact that they cannot, in many cases, afford to be both educated and married. No educational system which justifies such views can stand. No country which holds them, however great and powerful it may be, can long preserve the strength and purity of its institutions."

So far, therefore, as preliminary training is concerned, we may safely say that at least in the Northern states nothing less than a four-year high school course will be regarded as sufficient. The advisability of gradually advancing this requirement so as to include one or more years of college work must be determined according to the peculiar circumstances of the various sections of the country.

Some years ago, when the law school was on trial, there were many able champions of the law office as a proper place to study; but the growing success of the schools, coupled with the ever-increasing demands upon the time and energy of competent practitioners, has practically settled the question in favor of the schools. On this subject the report of the American Bar Association's Committee on Legal Education for 1907 says (Proceedings A.. B. A. 1907, p. 530):

"The Committee on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, in a report