are accompanied by catalogues and other illustra tive matter of the greatest value in giving a clear and comprehensive notion of the entire conduct of legal education in their respective countries. Among those already received we may mention as particularly full and clear those received from Russia, Sweden, Portugal, Denmark, and France, and also that from the Ministry of Justice in Baden, with full reports from the venerable universities of Heidelberg and Freyburg. Most interesting com munications also are those from the University of Adelaide, in South Australia, and from the Depart ment of Justice in Brisbane, Queensland. "But some large gaps still exist in the answers received, which must be filled before anything like a complete view can be given of the condition of legal education abroad, and the possible methods upon which our own improvements could be modelled. The replies from England, from Ger many, from Italy, from Spain, from the American countries of the Latin race, and a considerable number of other countries, are as yet too imperfect to be fairly compared with those we have mentioned above." Although thus reserving for a future report the larger and perhaps the more important part of the entire subject committed to them, (especially the " course of study," which was impliedly promised in their report of 1890), the report makes the following remarks upon method, which will, no doubt, have interest for all who are concerned in the management of law-schools, or interested in the problems of legal education : — "It is not so much in large additions of new topics to the present course as in better methods of teaching what all will agree to be necessary parts of the student's work, that our present schools may make the most immediate and useful advance. In saying this we would avoid anything like criticism upon particular methods, and especially upon the few teachers who in different schools have at tracted attention by methods which they themselves have devised and tested by long experience. Such criticism could only lead to futile controversies. The best test of any method of teaching is that it shall actually teach; that pupils who have gone out from one or two or three years of experience of it
have found themselves effectively prepared for the work which lies before them in active life. "The only method of teaching that deserves en tire reprobation is that which encourages or even permits the student to make the entire course a mere exercise of memory, without reflection or judgment, not beginning with the fundamental notions or principles by which all his reasoning is to be con ducted in actual practice; but laying up rule after rule, decision after decision, as if they were to con stitute the fund of knowledge upon which he had only to draw during his after life. "Absurd as this method is to any one who knows the daily work of an active practitioner, there is a fatal tendency toward it in much of the school routine, unless the teacher is both able and willing to counteract it. The natural disposition of begin ners is to look for rules of law that seem to them practical; that is, those which they can apply with out reflection or trouble to the persons and affairs which have come within their own realm of experi ence. At the same time they are constantly looking for certainty in the shape of a formula which may be applied to any facts, and will fit them without the necessity of modification by other rules. The beginner cannot at first appreciate the truth that the precision and certainty of a legal rule must always depend upon the abstract character of the terms in which it is expressed. The law cannot deal with concrete persons and things, as they are met with in daily life. It must abstract and gener alize before it can lay down any uniform rule. It is in reasoning from general terms and principles that the lawyer's work is to be done. No amount of text-book learning, no familiarity even with the cases will avail him, if he cannot reason from one set of facts to another by the use of the exact terms in which the law sums up its principles. "Moreover, the rules given in our practical text-books, being derived entirely from decided cases, always presuppose a large and important part of the lawyer's work as already done. It seems to be forgotten that this work does not consist entirely in the conduct of litigation. The lawyer who finds at the end of the year that he has not prevented much more litigation than he has conducted, is not doing the proper work of the profession. His first task must be in all cases to so advise his clients that they may keep out of litigation, or, if necessarily involved in it, may end it with the least trouble and expense; but it is not
