PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

SECTION OF LEGAL EDUCATION AND

ADMISSIONS TO THE BAR

The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar met at the Hotel Curtis on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 28, 1923. Silas H. Strawn, of Chicago, Illinois, delivered his annual address as Chairman. (The Address follows these minutes, page 681.)

John B. Sanborn, of Wisconsin, then presented an informal report of the Council. He stated that the Council had been holding meetings during the week taking up problems of classification of law schools and hearing representatives of various schools so that its report is not in final form.

The Council has been gathering information as to the standards of the law schools of the country, first, by the questionnaire, and, secondly, by various letters for additional information. The obtaining of this information and the problems of the schools which are near the border line has been a matter of some difficulty.

The Council has come to the conclusion that a school, to be in the approved list, must comply as to all of its students. Some schools or some institutions conduct classes both for full time and part time students. Some of these have arranged to comply with the standards of the American Bar Association or announced that they will in the near future comply with such standards as to their full time students, but have not arranged to so comply as to their part time students. The Council has concluded that such schools cannot be placed on the approved list.

It has been discovered that some schools whose published requirements for admission are in compliance with the standards laid down by the Bar Association have been in the habit of admitting a large number of special students. The Council has

taken the position that, while it hopes to see the special students very largely eliminated from schools which purport to comply with the Association's standards, for the present it will approve schools which do not exceed the 10 per cent which the Association of American Law Schools has decided upon for schools which belong to it.

The second standard of the Association, relating to the length of the law school course, provides for a three-year course for full time students and a longer course equivalent in the number of working hours for part time students. The Council has not laid down any rule as to what constitutes this equivalent. It has examined certain courses which have been submitted to it and has determined that none of these constitute the equivalent required by the standard. One ruling which it has made on this subject is that a rule which allows part time students to take the same amount of work as full time students on maintaining a certain grade, does not meet this requirement.

The next standard of the Association is for an adequate library. The Council has not set any definite number of volumes, although it calls attention to the requirement of the Association of American Law Schools of a minimum of 5000 volumes. In the case of each school it called for a detailed list of books in the library, and has examined this list and determined whether the library was adequate, taking into consideration the number of students and the character of the volumes.

The fourth standard of the Association requires schools to have a sufficient number of teachers in the school devoting their entire time to its work to insure actual personal contact with the student body. The Association of American Law Schools requires a minimum of three full time teachers. The Council has required each school to report its faculty and the work which each member does and has considered each case separately.

The Bar Association has also directed the Council on ascertaining what schools comply and what schools do not comply with its standards to make the information available so far as possible to intending law students. The Council will, of course, publish the list of schools. It believes, however, that the direction of the Bar Association would not be satisfied by a mere publication of the list and it now has under consideration plans for getting

the information, together with the literature giving the reasons which induced the Association to take the position which it has, into the hands as far as possible, of all persons who intend to study law.

Hollis R. Bailey of Massachusetts, James N. Frierson, of South Carolina, Charles M. Hepburn, of Indiana, and Henry C. Jones, of Iowa, discussed questions relating to legal education in their respective states.

The report of the Nominating Committee was approved, and the following officers were elected: Silas H. Strawn, of Illinois, Chairman; Harlan F. Stone, of New York, Vice-Chairman; John B. Sanborn, of Wisconsin, Secretary and Treasurer. Members of the Council for the term expiring 1927: Oscar Hallam, of Minnesota, and Andrew A. Bruce, of Illinois.

JOHN B. SANBORN,

Secretary.

ADDRESS.

BY

SILAS H. STRAWN,

OF CHICAGO, ILL.

As all of you know, at the meeting held in Washington, in February, 1922, which was designated as the "Washington Conference," there was adopted a series of resolutions which were subsequently adopted by the Association. Therefore, I take it that there is no controversy about where the Association stands with reference to the requirements for admission to the Bar. You are all familiar with those requirements. At the same time they adopted a resolution which reads as follows:

That the delegates and alternates from each state shall nominate one person to represent the state on a committee to be known as The Advisory Committee on Legal Education of the Conference of Bar Association Delegates. The duty of the committee shall be to advise and co-operate with the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association to promote the adoption of the standards of legal education and admission to the Bar, approved by this conference, and encourage the improvement of legal education.

I might say for your general information that that committee has not functioned this last year. I was asked to present to the Bar Association Delegates, but was unable to do so by reason of the necessity of being here, a brief report of the temporary chairman of that committee in which he said they had not functioned and that they would adopt as their report the report of the Section on Legal Education. Whether that committee will be continued, I do not know. I take it from this resolution that it is a perpetual committee and will be continued. However, that has nothing to do with the Section on Legal Education and I mention that as indicating that the Section on Legal Education assumed it to be the duty of that advisory committee to exert its activities in bringing about in the several states the adoption of the rule enunciated at the Washington Conference. On the other hand, the committee evidently assumed that it was the function of the Committee on Education.

Some states have been quite active in bringing about the adoption of the rule. I speak more intimately of the State of Illinois from which I come. At the last meeting of the Illinois State Bar Association at Peoria, which was held in June, after a quite lengthy debate, we succeeded in bringing about the adoption of a resolution by the Association which approaches very nearly to the letter of the Washington Conference rule. It embraces fully the spirit of that rule. It is a very controversial subject, especially among lawyers in general practice throughout the country, who are not in entire sympathy with law schools and colleges, and then, too, I find that some lawyers who had the advantage of a college education and law school education, become controversial on the subject. Whether they desire to debate or not, I do not know, but they seem to think that the Washington rule interferes with the development of modern geniuses like John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln. Those are the two persons whom they generally cite as great examples of the unlettered "siwash," or the great men who have arrived without legal education. If the Bar examiners, as you know, were willing to take everyone that came before them as a John Marshall or Abraham Lincoln, there would he no need of legal education. However, this country has not developed a large crop of John Marshalls and Abraham Lincolns, and they are not very conspicuous.

Speaking for myself, I did not have the advantage of either a college education or law school education. It has been my job for the last thirty years, however, to supervise twenty-five or thirty lawyers. I do not like to talk about myself, but merely as a matter of evidence perhaps the qualification of the witness might add more weight to what he has to say, it has been my experience uniformly that those students who come into my office as practicing lawyers after admission to the Bar, go the farthest who have had the best background, and where in several instances we have been sympathetic with the office boy who has gone to night school and then to night law school and become a lawyer, I have yet to discover one of those young men, however diligent or ambitious he may have been, who has become adequate to meet a very severe test or higher requirement of our practice. They are honest and industrious, and often have those basic qualities which are very necessary to a successful practitioner,