The degree of LL.B. is conferred at the end of the second year upon those who pass the severe examination prescribed; but there is a third year, or Advanced Class, which is specially recommended to all who are able to take it. No specific curriculum is established for the third year, but it is devoted chiefly to reviews, and to the study of special subjects.
Not the least important phase of instruction is found in the Moot Courts. In one sense they might be said to be the most important, since they serve to condense and bring into active use the knowledge acquired in the class-room.
The Moot Courts are held weekly throughout the year by the Dean, with General Terms, from time to time, for the hearing of appealed cases by other members of the Faculty. They are conducted as nearly as possible with the forms of an ordinary court of justice; and the students draw pleadings in the cases assigned to them, and conduct them through all the stages of a legal or equitable suit, before trying the issues in the Moot Court.
Club Courts are also organized by the students, in which some member of the Faculty sits as judge, and from which an appeal lies to the Moot Court. A trial in "The Hammond Court of Causes" would be interesting, perhaps instructive, to an old practitioner. "The Moot Court Record," a paper published weekly, prints the opinions and briefs of counsel.
And so the St. Louis Law School has developed. In its twenty-one years of life it has passed through infancy into a sturdy maturity. Starting without an abiding-place, it has its home, by formal dedication from Washington University, rent-free forever, in a handsome, commodious structure, built for a school, and well equipped for its purposes.
An institution without means, or any guaranty of income except for the most necessary expenses, it has become the possessor, through the liberality of friends, of an endowment of $77,000. A Law School without a law book has acquired a library of nearly six thousand volumes.
Truly it may be said that the energy, the zeal, and the devotion of its founders have produced large results in the past. Who can doubt the promise of the future?
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THE LIBRARY.
