Some Law Clerks That I Have Known A LAW SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT ORATION BY A. M. BARRISTER, or ‘me New YORK BAR
Note. — Like many others of the world's greatest orations, among them some of Cicero's, the present address was never delivered orally. The author was unwilling to give these valuable thoughts to any one Law School alone, but was persuaded to give them to the world at large through the pages of this magazine.
0 U NG men of the Class of 1911. When your dean asked me to deliver the oration upon this memorable occasion he gave me some more or less specific instructions. He requested that the thoughts which I give you should be taken from life and from my actual experience, rather than from the distant
rare atmosphere of idealistic theories. But heinsisted that the talk should be ele vating though not too lofty, and improv ing though not too tiresome. In looking about through my long experience for topics that would fill these requirements, I passed over the much mooted problems of legal ethics that are now often talked about; and I passed by the subject of disbarment of attorneys which will probably never be of immediate impor tance to very many of you; and so I passed over many other possible and impossible topics for this address. Dur ing my cogitations it occurred to me that many of you will leave the legal
profession before long to become bank presidents or book agents, or politicians or
judges — but
before
you
leave,
have to judge for yourselves whether I have carried out my instructions. The first man we will call Mr. Gay. He came from a New York law school where they teach a man to pass the bar examinations, and he certainly didn't know any more than they taught him.
He was a very delightful fellow to_ meet and all the girls were crazy about him. He wore the best clothes that I ever saw on a law clerk and how he paid for them I don't know. Moreover Gay was forever going out to dances, recep tions, theatre parties and similar exer cises of the unemployed rich of New York. That sort of thing also costs money in New York even when one acts the part of a sponge, soaking up enter tainment without paying for it. Now just between you and me Mr. Gay was at that time partially holding down a job that paid just $10 per week, and the job was pretty nearly getting away from him at that. I supposed for a while that he was in
dependently wealthy and was trying to practise law as a pastime. But one day he happened to tell me that he was
practically every one of you will have been a law clerk in an office for a longer or shorter period. 50 I finally decided, for your own benefit and for the benefit of your future employers, that I would introduce you to_ a few law clerks that
such elegant clothes on $10 per, to say
I have known.
nothing of board and lodging.
You and your dean will
wholly dependent upon his wages or
rather “salary" as he called it. I was so surprised that I involuntarily asked him how the devil he managed to pay for It is
