PRACTICE WORK IN LAW SCHOOLS how far might law-school instruction reduce them? In answering this, a distinction should be made. Many rules of practice depend in detail upon no principle, but are arbitrary rules of convenience. Of this class, for instance, are many of those relating to appellate procedure. A variety of things are to be done in a manner and at times that are minutely specified. No lawyer not largely engaged in perfecting appeals ever tries to charge his memory with these minutiae, or fails to refresh it by a reference to his books. Most mistakes here occur through carelessness, and would not be sen sibly lessened by any reasonable amount of law-school instruction. Now, it is pre cisely this class of questions which is raised most frequently. About one-third of all practice points concern the one subject of appeal and error; and such topics as judg ment, judicial sale, levy and seizure, limi tation of actions, replevin, and attachment, all of them bristling with minute statutory regulation, form a considerable part of the remainder. The experienced lawyer be comes familiar with the common details of practice in these matters, but even for the tyro the information is plainly written out in the statute or contained in his annotated manual of local practice, and if he be care ful and intelligent there is little the law school can giX'e him on such points which he will not readily acquire for himself. The attitude of the law school toward such mat ters should be that expressed by one of the New York Board of Bar Examiners, when he said before this Section a few years ago: "We know that the legislature is apt to repeal at any time all we know on the subject of pleading and practice, and as we practice with a Code on our desks for ready reference at all times, we will not exact from the student knowledge we do not possess in an eminent degree ourselves." ' On the other hand, while the details of 1 American'Bar Assn. Reports, 533 (1899).
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practice in our various states differ, its gen eral principles and theories are similar. The chief benefit which a student will gain from a course in practice in the law school will be less an abiding knowledge of the exact steps to be taken in a given proceeding than an idea of what kind of steps he must expect to look up the details about in his local practice books. Just as it is a better use of his time to learn the arrangement of a digest than to try to memorize the cases, so it is better for him to learn what is typi cal of practice in general than to spend much time in familiarizing himself with local methods of doing typical acts. No doubt the best method of teaching what is typical, in practice, even in schools whose students come from many states, is to base the instruction upon the practice of one state, as Professor Redfield suggested a few years ago, emphasizing what is essential rather than details. The important ele ments of common practice, including the steps in the principal forms of action through judgment to execution, with their ordinary incidents, the procedure in the chief provisional remedies, and the typical procedure of an appeal, may be fairly well covered in the equivalent of two hours of class-work weekly for a year. If, in addition, a serious attempt is made to teach trial prac tice and the art of conducting cases before a jury, probably at least as much more time must be spent. No doubt both of these courses, well-con ducted, would be useful to a student. The practical question, as has often been said, is one of relative values. What is the best use of a student's time? I do not think this question can be answered in the same way for all law schools. A school may be unable to provide a wide curriculum, and its students, drawn almost wholly from a sin gle state, may for the most part go into practice for themselves immediately after leaving the school. A large majority of American law schools are of this type. The relative value of the practice courses in
