In the November Atlantic Samuel F. Batchelder, in an interesting article on " Old Times at the Law School," gives the following account of the methods of instructions in the early days of the Harvard Law School: — "Once fairly started on the legal path, the student of those days found the life by no means hard. His text-books were lent to him by the school, the library having a vast stock of duplicates of the standard treatises. These he studied, or not, as he felt inclined. One of the instructors of that golden age admits in his memoirs that though ' a list of books was made up, for a course of study and reading, which was enlarged from time to time, it cannot be strictly said that this course was prescribed, for nothing was exacted.' Lectures began at eleven and ended at one. Usually the same professor occupied the chair for both hours, changing his subject at noon. Saturday was then dies non. Of the lectures themselves there were but two notable differences from those of to-day, — a charming tendency, especially in the reign of Story, to wander from the subject in hand into fields of reminiscence and general theory as pleasant and almost as instructive, and the fact that a text-book formed the basis of the work. But this was often lost sight of and overlaid with a colloquial expanding of general rules, putting questions on parallel cases, hypothetical or ac tual, queries from the students, and expressions of opinion, which must have been surprisingly like a lecture of to-day. "The conversational method, indeed, seems to have been coeval with the very beginnings of legal instruction in this country. It was used in Reeve's private Law School, begun in 1795, at Litchfield, Conn., and lasting till 1833. This school attained a very high standard of excel lence, and over one thousand pupils attended it. Much the same method was also used in Judge Howe's short-lived school at Northampton, Mass., begun in 1823, and of very high character, but collapsing when its ablest lecturer, Ashmun, on whom the instruction devolved almost entirely, accepted the Royall Professorship at Cam bridge in 1829. His lectures are remembered for their clear grasp of the subject and the care with which he frequently put his classes through exact and searching oral examinations. "Despite such individual points of excellence,
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the general scheme of instruction at the Law School was for many years in amazing con fusion. The courses were designed to cover two years' work; but, apparently on the prin ciple that the law has neither beginning nor ending, only half of them were given in any one year, so that it was entirely luck whether on en tering the school you found yourself at the be ginning of the course or plunged into the middle of it. "A considerable offset to this disjointed state of theory was the attention paid to practice in the moot courts. These, if not invented, were certainly brought into great prominence by Judge Story. One was held at least every week, and in the height of the system on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. One of the professors presided, and all the students were expected to attend and take notes; though this operation usually consisted in copying down verbatim both the briefs, which, in those days of expensive printing, the counsel slowly read aloud from manuscript. The cases were always on agreed facts, often drawn from the actual ex perience of the presiding justice. Twice a year there were regular trials before a jury drawn from the undergraduates, or sometimes, with a delicate humor, from the divinity students. These affairs were made the occasion for a sort of solemn festival, and the court-room was crowded to its utmost capacity. Many a great name in the history of the Bench and the Bar won its first recognition in these mimic com bats. In point of fact, noisy applause and uprorious expressions of approval rather spoiled the sought-for dignified effect of a real court, and were sometimes excessive. "The law clubs, too, were an important ele ment in the work of the school. They were named for great legal writers, — the Fleta, the Marshall, etc. The Coke Club was of imme morial antiquity, and usually contained the most brilliant members of the school. The average number of students in a club was from fifteen to twenty. They met in some of the smaller rooms in Dane Hall. On any case there was but one counsel for each side and one judge. The cases were usually those which had been announced for approaching moot courts; so interest and attendance on the latter were always kept at a high level."
