tion should be broad and liberal, it is neither just nor practicable to extend the requirement beyond the practical ne cessities. Richly endowed institutions can afford to set up their own standards and live up to them, but they are not necessarily the criterion for others not so favored, or who are required to rely upon public ap proval of the standard established by them. It is not, and perhaps never will be, the policy of the average American law school to close its doors to those who have not re ceived a college education covering a period of four years. Public educators, it is true, should be the leaders of public opinion in matters pertaining to public education, but they must not be too far in advance of the main column if they hope to render practical service to their day and generation. What the average law school aims to accomplish is to make good practising lawyers and not jurists. Of course, it is proper enough to provide schools for the training of jurists, and the same is true as to schools for the training of statesmen and diplomats, but these are not essential for the education of men for the practical business of the lawyer. Such schools as Columbia and Harvard and other* with equally high class requirements for entrance will continue to be models for the teaching of law to the great majority of the other law schools of the country; but in respect of their entrance requirements few other schools can ever hope to follow their lead. Indeed, it is by no means the unan imous verdict of the best educators of the country, that a four years' college course will prepare the student materially better for his work in the professional school than a course of say, two years, in the study of the arts and sciences judiciously arranged for him. When such men as President Hadley seriously ad vocate the reduction of the college course for professional men to two or three years, the
suggestions cannot be brushed aside with in difference. Judge Simeon E. Baldwin, for many years an eminent instructor in law in Yale University, and himself a university trained man and a ripe scholar, in a paper read before the American Law School Asso ciation at its meeting in August last, among other very excellent things had this to say: "The time has come when we must confess that our American university system has at tempted the impossible. It has aimed at add ing 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 the strain. They are patient no longer. They are glad that those whose life is to be that of the 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 lifework in time to reap some of its rewards be fore the flush and joy of youth are past." It is a hopeful sign for the future of our profession that the American Bar Associa tion is exerting its great influence in behalf of more stringent requirements for admis sion to the practice. The wonderful prog ress made in this direction during the last ten or twelve years is due almost wholly to the organized effort of the American Bar. .Much of needful work still remains to be clone. In many States the unsatisfactory patronage of the better class of law schools is due to the indifferent requirements for ad mission to the bar. That every additional year in the life of the Republic will bring new and gratifying reforms can not be doubted, in view of what has already been accomplished; but they can come only through the untiring efforts of the American lawyer who has at heart the good of his profession.
