Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Katz, Wilber G

Human Nature and Training for Law Practice

Ribble, F.D.G.

ACTIVITIES OF TiHE ASSOCIATIONA LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENTTo the Member Schools:The strength and justification of any association is its ability to serve itsmembership and the public. The Association of American Law Schoolssince its founding in 1900 has assisted its members and contributed to thepublic interest by its constant promotion of high standards of legal educa-tion. The vehicles for this accomplishment, however, have been limited toannual meetings, occasional inspections and visitations, and the untiringefforts of individuals and officers of the Association.From the very beginning the lack of a regular channel of communicationbetween the members has been keenly felt. With this first issue of the Joun-NAL OF LEGAL EDUCATION that long-sought goal has been achieved. There-fore, I welcome this opportunity to add an official preface to this issue andto venture the opinion that no undertaking of the Association will have great-er significance to the future welfare of legal education.The Association is indebted to the members of the Editorial Board andthe Advisory Committee for their services in the organization and develop-ment of the project. Likewise we are indebted to the Duke University LawSchool for its contribution to the editorial services of the JOURNAL, and tothe publishers who have made this venture possible.The JOURNAL will provide a ready channel for the communication of ideasand the reporting of experiments in legal education. I am certain that ourmembers will readily avail themselves of the opportunity to submit such ma-terial to the editors. This interchange of information will not only assurethe success of the JounNArL but will substantially contribute to the growth andimprovement of legal education in our member schools.We may look, therefore, upon this first issue as an auspicious beginningof a decisive advance in the services of our Association to its members, thebar, and the public.BERNARD C. GAvIT,President.Indiana University.ANNOUNCEMENT OF ANNUAL MEETINGThe: next meeting will be held in the Netherland Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati,Ohio, on December 28, 29 and 30. The hotel is a very attractive andpleasant place for a meeting. The Executive Committee's decision wasreached in part in view of the fact that the Edgewater Beach Hotel willnot be available at the regnlar meeting time this year. The rates at theNetherland Plaza are as follows:Single room ................................ $4.00-$10.00Double bedroom, for. two ..................... $6.50-$12.50Twin bedroom, for two ....................... $8.50-$13.00Suite: parlor and bedroom ................... $15.00-$50.00All rooms are outside rooms with bath (tub and shower) and radio.It is suggested that all members planning to attend the meeting shouldmake arrangements so soon as possible.The meeting will return to the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago in 1949.F. D. G. RIBBLE,Secretary-Treasurer.University of Virginia.

English

Announcement of Annual Meeting

Pemberton, John DeJ, Jr.

The Conference Report

Griswold, Erwin N

REPORT OF THE NATIONAL LAW STUDENTCONFERENCE ON LEGAL EDUCATIONFOREWORDEkWIN N. GRISWOLD *O ne of the aspects of legal education which has helped to keep ithealthy is the fact that it has always been subject to self-criticism.We are inclined to foirget the past, and to think that discussion of ob-jectives and methods of legal education has been a recent development.But the Index to Legal Periodicals is full of references to articles andspeeches on legal education over a period of a century. Most of thecareful consideration of the problems has come from law teachers.Much of it, especially in the earlier years, has come from practicing mem-bers of the bar.Only rarely have law students formulated their views of the process,although they are the group who are in many ways best qualified toevaluate it. This is not because law students are inarticulate. Thosewho try to teach know that that is not so; and the teacher often learnsmuch from their comments. It is rather because law students are aquickly changing group, who become practitioners and teachers them-selves before they ordinarily have much opportunity to express theirviews in any formal way.As far as I know, the National Law Student Conference on LegalEducation was an entirely spontaneous organization brought forth bylaw students themselves-that unusually mature and qualified groupof students who have been acquiring their legal education in the post-warperiod. When the project was first broached to me, I am afraid thatI had immediately the educational administrator's instinctive reaction:"Why can't these tyros mind their own business, and leave these diffi-cult questions to us ?" Or, "Here is another group trying to upset theapplecart. They should see that our methods are good, based as theyare on our long and rather intense experience." But it was soon ap-parent that the group involved was very much in earnest, and not espe-cially in an iconoclastic frame of mind. (Indeed, it is rather interestingto see in the report of the Conference the extent to which the men froma particular school felt called upon and were willing to defend the prac-tices of their school.) The Conference was well planned, and developedinto a thorough exploration of current problems in legal education. I* Dean, Harvard University Law School.64NATIONAL LAW STUDENT CONFERENCEthink that, on the whole, it produced little that is new in the way ofcriticisms, or in the way of suggestions for development of law schoolpractices. But it did serve to emphasize old criticisms and suggestions.The publication here of a summary of its proceedings will serve notmerely as a record of student thought with respect to legal educationnow, but also as a stimulus to law teachers who are charged with thecontinued conduct of legal education.Four points suggest themselves to me on a reading of the materialwhich follows, three by their presence, and one by its absence. Per-haps it will help to introduce the reader to the report if I note these,with a brief comment on. each one.1. Case method. No discussion of legal education is complete with--out reexamination of the case method. So it has been for the past seven-ty-eight years. Yet most of this discussion seems to me to be futile.Vlore than forty years ago a distinguished English observer of Americanlegal education wrote: "The present position of the case system inAmerican law schools scarcely admits of precise definition.In the same school, different teachers adopt different methods." ' Thereare, and should be, as many forms of the case method as there areteachers. Certainly it should be used differently in a third-year seminar-than in a basic first-year course. But the case 'method is only a toolthe possibilities of which have been pretty thoroughly demonstrated;and its limitations are fairly well known. What is important is not"method, within wide limits, but teachers. A good teacher will develop'his own method, and probably won't be as good if he tries to force him-,self into some other method.2. Extra-legal materials. Another perennial is the extent to which-the law course should deal with matters which our grandfathers would-not have called legal. I use "grandfathers" advisedly, for no one sincethe time of our fathers has doubted the fact that law is very thoroughly'intermingled with other social sciences-history, sociology, economics,psychology, philosophy, ethics, anthropology, to give an incomplete list.The question is not whether law students should be aware of these things,but how and when. Is there a function for a college education? Have-our colleges completely failed in their objective? Should law schools-take over the complete education of the prospective lawyer from the:secondary school on? Is it impossible that law teachers teaching law-may be cultivated, too, and aware that law operates as a means of social.control in a complex society?Certainly experimentation with means to meet this problem should,continue. But presumably the law student should know some law. LawI Brown, Tule Americau Law ,.chool, 21 L.Q.REv. 69, 72 (1905).1948]JOURNAL OF LEGAL EDUCATIONis designed as an instrument of social control. It is not a mere tool forreaching objectives. It has a history of its own, a method of its own,and some standards which may not be shared by all other disciplines.It takes some law to make a lawyer.3. Practical training. A constant complaint about law schools isthat they do not turn out finished lawyers, ready on their own imme-diately to vindicate any right in any forum, or to draft legal documentsof any desired complexity. This point is constantly made by the prac-ticing members of the bar, and it was voiced by a distinguished judgeat the concluding dinner of the present conference.' There was a timewhen law training was almost exclusively practical. The apprenticesystem was followed in this country for many years; and it is possiblethat it gave way because legal education in law schools demonstrated itssuperiority.But should not the schools teach practice too? That resolves itself,it seems to me, into a question of the best way to use time. Can theschools do something better than teach practice, something that cannot-be done as well after the man leaves school? I think they can. And Ithink, too, that they are not very well qualified to teach practice, atleast-not so well as the law offices during a man's first year out of lawschool. If this means that the law schools do not turn out men whohave learned all they ever need to know, that should surprise no one. In-many respects the first year or two of practice is and should be an in-terneship. Any good lawyer's education continues throughout his wholecareer at the bar.The medical profession has taken economic advantage of the factthat the medical schools do not turn out finished doctors, and this has.imposed- a severe burden on entrance into active medical practice. It is,I think, to the credit of the practicing members of the legal professionthat they have very generally not exploited young law school graduates.2But there can be no doubt that a large part of legal education is still con-ducted in law offices-in the young graduate's own office if he hangsout his shingle by himself. And there seems to me little room to doubtthat that is as it should be.4. The public responsibility of the lawyer. My final point is one-which does not appear to have been dealt with directly by the Conference,though it was, no doubt, implicit in much of the discussion. It is the re-2 Frank, A Plea for Lawyer-Schools, 56 YALE L.J. 1303 (1947).3 Current graduates may be interested in the observation of the English visitorfrom whom I have already quoted: "'The student who has passed through ourschool,' I heard one Dean say, 'may count with certainty on immediately securinga minimum salary of $500." Brown, The American Law School, 21 L.Q.REV. 69,.71 (1905).[VOL. INATIONAL LAW STUDENT CONFERENCEsponsibility of legal education for fostering and inculcating the buddinglawyer's awareness of the opportunity and responsibility of the lawyerfor service to the public. In some ways this seems to me to be the cen-tral problem of modern legal education. I do not mean to suggest thatthere have not been many lawyers, through the years, who have con-tributed greatly to the public welfare. But I do suggest that as a pro-fession we have not wholly lived up to our possibilities, and if that istrue, the schools must share responsibility for it.In many respects our law is outmoded; many of our legal institutionsare inadequate. For the most part legal service is a luxury, availablein any real sense to only a small portion of the public. (It is still a ques-tion whether a defendant charged with a serious crime is entitled to theservices of qualified legal counsel.) But the problem is broader thanthat. Even when counsel are well paid, or especially when they arewell paid, they tend, naturally enough, to forget the public interest andtheir public responsibility. Thus the trust-company lawyer soon seesonly the trust-company point of view; the insurance or railroad lawyerin times past seemed to carry the insurance or railroad torch with himeven to the bench. Fortunately this is a matter on which there are sig-nificant exceptions. But it should not be a matter of exception. Ifthere is anything that a law school education should do it is to develop-the attitude of public responsibility in the young lawyer.This was the burden of Mr. Justice Stone's notable address on "ThePublic Influence of the Bar." " Many years ago, William Draper Lewis-put the point with particular reference to the function of the law schools.He wrote:Our ideals shape our actions. The lawyer is no exception to this rule. Thelawyers of the United States fail to perform what I have called the public du-ties of the profession, while the English lawyer and our brethren of the medicalprofession to a large extent perform their public duties, because they have andwe have not any idea that we have such duties. This lack of perception hasits root in our legal education. For the law offices and the night school thereis an adequate excuse. But for the university law school there is no such ex-cuse. If, as a profession, we are to awake to our failure to perform our pub-lic duties, it is the small class of men who are devoting their lives to legal teach-ing who must point the way.5Lawyers should have spirit as well as learning. They should havedepth as well as breadth. Here is the challenge and the opportunity ofthe law schools and of the bar.4 48 HAxv.L.REV. 1 (1934).5 Lewis, Legal Education and the Failure of the Bar to Perform its Public Du-.ties, 45 Am.L.REG. (N.s) 629, 645 (1906).1948]

Report of the National Law Student Conference on Legal Education: Foreword

Hyman, Jacob D

An Introductory Survey of the Place of Law in Our Civilization. By Kenneth Redden

Bordwell, Percy

Property, Wealth, Land: Allocation, Planning and Development, Selected Cases and Other Materials on the Law of Real Property: An Introduction. By Myers Smith McDougal and David Haber

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