8
The Green Bag
ber of years the applicant has attended law school or the length of time he has spent in preparation should be far from the examiners’ thought. What time a
may be, by an unusual efiort, do it in two, or even in one year's time. Four years of preparation, whether in or out
young man has spent in preparation pales before the real question,‘ how well prepared is be? If seventeen years of
lawyer; ten, yea in some cases, twenty,
actual practice did not qualify one man for an examination that the youth fresh from college is expected to pass credit ably, then how much weight can we
place upon the number of years as a test of ability? Some young men who are in earnest can prepare themselves for
of college, cannot make a young man a years has failed to do that. But the one thing that, while it will not make a lawyer out of the young man, will dis
cover whether he is a lawyer in time to protect the profession, is the proper kind of bar examination. I have not the space at my disposal to discuss at length the various tests I think ought to be put to the applicants.
the bar in half the time it takes others
I can, in concluding, only enumerate
who are going “to become lawyers" just
some of them.
because their fathers were lawyers, or because the profession seems to offer fine opportunities for displays before the
beginners at the bar is their sublime ignorance of how to commence and con
public.
substantive law, they may be well in
Patrick Henry, so history tells
The saddest lack of most
duct a law suit.
They may know the
us, studied law only six weeks before he
formed in the law of evidence, and they
entered the profession. Why cannot others, not quite so gifted as he, but of unusual quickness of mind and single
may know something about pleading; but not very many of them can tell you the first steps towards instituting a law
ness of purpose, become qualified by
suit. This knowledge should be re quired of them before they are allowed
a very short period of specialized study? ‘The question of real importance, it seems to me, is, can the applicant stand
the test provided by those who have the bar examinations in charge? And the single test that can afford the bar the protection it should have is a test that only the fittest can survive. The young
to enter the profession. The applicant should exhibit a degree of conversance with legal ethics. He should know some
thing of the principles upon which to base the charging of fees. He should be able to answer “yes" or “no” to a legal question, or to say whether or not the question can be answered by yes or no.
man should not be allowed to salve his
He should be required to show that he
fears with the comforting thought that because he is fortunate enough to be
can, from a given statement of facts,
“sent" to a law school for three or four years he will pass into the _legal field with all the glory of a conqueror. In
to support and to defeat it. For this purpose an examination in a law library
broader justice to a greater number, he should be allowed to feel that though he is not able to attend law school or to wait three or four years, he can, by hard and systematic work, by real manhood
and earnestness of purpose, qualify him self without the term in college, and it
find cases to support, or defeat, or both
is highly desirable. Too many'lawsuits have been lost by lawyers who have read case after case to the Court that were about as applicable to the facts involved as a rule of common law, which has been substituted by a different con
stitutional provision, would be to a matter of present day conduct.
