sociation that no examination is complete and fair unless an opportunity is given through oral examination to draw inferences from the appearance and manner and dis course of the candidate. An oral cross-ex amination of the candidate on his certificate of study would be likely to disclose the frauds which often lurk in those certificates. In order to secure a uniform standard, bar examinations ought to be under the direct supervision of the highest judicial tribunal of the State, and should be conducted by a committee appointed by that court. Such is the plan adopted in those States in which effective steps have been taken to provide adequate standards and methods for admis sion to the bar. The permanency of the committee should be assured by providing terms of not less than three years, and the members should retire not simultaneously, but in rotation, so that a majority may al ways be constituted of members of experi ence. Whether the committee ought to be small, as in New York, where it is composed of three membsrs, or large, as in Ohio, where it consists of ten, or a compromise between these extremes, as in Michigan and Illinois, where the committee consists of five mem bers, is a point upon which my observation or experience does not enable me to express a definite opinion. One would suppose that a small committee would be more likely to be effective than a large committee with its natural tendency to divided responsibility. The compensation to be paid to bar ex aminers is a matter of practical importance. The efficient discharge of their duties re quires much time in the careful scrutiny of certificates, preparation of papers and ex-, amination and grading of the answers there to. There would seem to be no reason why an assessment from candidates for admission to the bar should not be made, sufficient to secure proper compensation to the bar ex aminers. In New York each examiner re ceives a salary of $2,500 per annum. In
Ohio they are limited to their necessary traveling expenses, with $5.00 per day as» compensation for each day actually em ployed in the work of the committee. The importance of most rigid precautions with respect to the character and scrutiny of certificates of the candidate's moral char acter needs no enlargement before a body of lawyers who best know the incalculable mischief which an unscrupulous man may do at the bar. With respect to admission of attorneys irom other States it is necessary to take pre cautions against those who seek to use cer tificates from other States for the purpose of avoiding an examination in the State in v.hich they intend to practise. In Ohio we provide by statute that a person who has become a resident of the State, and who, having studied law for a period of at least two years and passed a regular examination, has been regularly admitted as an at torney in the highest court of any other State of the United States, and has been in active practice of the law in a State or in the Supreme Court of the United States for a period of not less than five years imme diately preceding his removal to the State of Ohio, upon producing satisfactory evidence of such admission, study and practice, and of good moral character, may be admitted 10 the bar in Ohio without examination. While I regard the scrutiny of the cer tificates of general education and of study of law of first importance and the character and method of the bar examination itself as also important, it must be admitted that the supremely important thing is to have a com mittee of bar examiners imbued with a deter mination to maintain and enforce a hi^h standard of admission to the. bar, for the standard will be whatever the committee makes it. Before a determined committee unworthy candidates shrink and false cer tificates disappear. In their hands methods and svstetns and details become compara
