LEGAL EDUCATION.1 T N view of the attention paid in this coun try to the science and art of Education in all its branches, and the voluminous literature already accumulated on that subject, it is sin gular that so little has been said ordone forthe improvement of a branch so important in its relation to the State and community, and so difficult of treatment, as the proper trainingof candidates for the bar. The elaborate course of study put forth by Professor Hoffman, of Baltimore, more than half a century ago, still remains almost, if not quite, alone in the field; and that is rather a catalogue of books to be read on the law itself, and the sci ences then regarded as part of the necessary equipment of a thoroughly accomplished lawyer, than a discussion of the rationale of legal education. The same may be said of most, if not all, of the minor publications on the same topic to be found scattered through the legal journals or in the form of occasional addresses. Even the excellent report made to the American Bar Association in 1879, by the gentlemen who then constituted the Standing Committee on Legal Education,2 hardly entered upon this part of the subject, except in its warm advocacy of law schools, and of a broad and liberal course of study, covering not only the practical law but the same ancillary sciences of which Professor Hoffman had presented so full a view. The effect of that report, made twelve years ago, is visible in the increase of law schools since, and in a steady if not rapid growth of the attendance upon them, as compared with the number of students still trained in the old method of pupilage in an office. In a few of these schools the teachers have had the leisure and the preparatory training requisite I 1 American Bar Association Report of the Committee on Legal Education at the session of 1891 in Boston. 2 Composed of Messrs. Carlton Hunt of New Orleans, Henry Stockbridge of Baltimore, and Edmund H. Ben nett of Massachusetts.
for careful study of methods of legal instruc tion, and have made great improvements on the traditional process of reading and reciting the common text-books intended for practi tioners' use. But among these there has been no unity of action or interchange of ideas. Their improvements have usually been kept to themselves, not so much by any selfish desire as by the absence of opportunity for public discussion of the subject and com parison of the different theories underlying them. Meanwhile, in the great majority of the schools the instruction has been given by busy lawyers or judges, in hours taken from more profitable or more pressing busi ness, and usually as a generous sacrifice of their own interests to those of the profession and its neophytes. These have had no time for the formation of new methods or study of the principles on which such methods must rest, even when they had the preparatory training in juris prudence and the science of the law which such work demands. It is highly creditable to them as a body that the instruction given under such circumstances has been as good and effective as it has; but they themselves have been the first to feel and declare the imperative need of a better system of legal education in the schools, of a closer economy of the student's time as well as an extension in the usual length of the course, and espe cially of more thorough and systematic atten tion to elementary law. The reports made to the same Association by its present Standing Committee in 1890 and 1891 have emphasized these needs and the defects of the present system, and that of this year has made at least a beginning of the work of improvement. The composition of the Committee is a guarantee of their familiarity with the topic, and the unanimity with which their results have been reached is a proof that the report em bodies the general sentiment of the pro
