applying them.1 It is the aim of our school and of every teacher in it to arm the learner for the actual and practical struggles of the bar, — to meet the real and probable exigen cies of the court-room, — and it is believed that its graduates have been able to hold their own against all comers, and to earn dis tinction for themselves and credit for the school. Fifteen lectures and recitations are held each week, and the pupils are examined daily as the lectures advance; Saturday is moot-court day, and on every Wednesday the whole class is orally examined on the lectures of the past week; while stringent written ex aminations are held at the close of each term. The following is the course of study for the year 1890-1 891 : — Junior Class. Elementary Law (Recitations); Contracts (Lec tures and Recitations); Domestic Relations (Lec tures and Recitations); Criminal Law (Lectures); Medical Jurisprudence (Lectures); Torts (Lectures and Recitations); Personal Property (Recitations); Real Property (Recitations); Sources of Municipal Law (Lectures); International Law (Lectures). Senior Class. Jurisprudence (Lectures); Contracts (Lectures and Discussions); Commercial Law, including Agency, Partnership, Sales, Commercial Instru ments, Bailments, Insurance, etc. (Lectures and Discussions); Corporations (Lectures); Equity Jurisprudence (Lectures); Real Property (Lec tures and Recitations); Practice and Pleading, Common Law and Code (Lectures); Evidence ( Lectures); Constitutional Law (Lectures); Ro man Law (Lectures); Patent Law (Lectures). In addition to the above there will, during the course, be lectures on Federal Jurisprudence, Shipping and Admiralty, Corporate Trusts, Trial of Causes, Codes and Codification, Legal Ethics, and Judicial Systems. Up to the present, the Law School has always maintained a one year's course. In some respects this has been advantageous, 1 The writer of these lines has not scrupled in his lectures to read an occasional leading case in verse, destined for the " Green Bag." He tries them first in this way, as Moliere used to read his comedies to his servant-maid.
in others disadvantageous. Young men who could afford to wait two or three years and could bear the expense, have generally preferred the great schools of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, with their leisure and ease; but for ambitious men, of limited time, anx ious to enter upon practice and unable or unwilling to undergo the expense of a long course, and willing to work hard, Albany has always presented an excellent field of preparation. Such are the men who have come to and have gone out from this school and who now make up its classes. It is believed that the school is unique in this respect. Its students almost without an exception belong to the class of workers. It has no drones. It holds out no induce ments to men who go to a law school to kill time, and such men fight shy of it. The spirit of intellectual emulation and of work for work's sake which pervades the school is so pronounced that it affords a fresh sur prise to the members of the Faculty at the incoming of each class, and attracts the attention of all who come into contact with the students during their stay in the city. The course at this school is a very ardu ous one. As much is taught here in one year as in Columbia in two years. I will not say it is as well done. The professors have long felt the limitation of time, and it will be much more gratifying to them, and better if not easier for the students, to have two years for the work. In pursuance of this idea it has been de termined by the Faculty, co-operating with the new dean, at once to expand the course into one of two years. The present scho lastic year is the last under the old system, as our school is the last to adhere to that system. The great extension of the field of law which recent years have witnessed, the enforced deliberation of new and more effec tive methods of instruction, and more than all, a growing conviction of the importance to a lawyer of a thorough grounding in legal principles such as no amount of instruction can give in a single year, hav induced the
