Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/547

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5o8
The Green Bag.

her Majesty's counsel learned in the law. It is a good old custom that would bear being copied in other crafts, where the atmosphere will add his own jest, old as its author, and surrounding those at the top is too chill to having the official stamp of an Equity judge. invite the intrusion of the younger brethren. The juniors have their knots and gatherings, To say truth, the junior bar nowadays where the talk is not all of things legal, and needs all the help and counsel he can find. shows that they are yet willing to turn aside There is no harder fight than that which from learning to be wise. And among all awaits the student who, having left the —-from the dozen to the junior barrister — King's Inns and taken his degree, enters is the sense of comradeship and freedom the Library with only his intellect and which comes to men who have worked and energy to help him. At the King's Inns fought together. he may acquire all the profes It is good to see . sional equip the junior with! ment he needs. his first brief The days when take it to a one might, by a Queen's Counsel strict attention and Crown Pros to the business ecutor to boot, ofTerm dinners, state his case, and in ignorance and receive in of the common structions and a law, yet become hint or two. In a barrister, are deed, to have the gone with the reputation in the men who took Library of being their ease at a "safe opinion" their Inn in this is an enviable fashion, and who position, but one yet left a repu having its re THE COURT OF BANKRUPTCY tation hard to sponsibilities. It live up to. means that the The law student now undergoes a three holder is guide, philosopher, and friend to the junior bar of Ireland. So far is the system years' course of lectures, examinations, and carried that the junior becomes fastidious in reporting of cases which will teach him much his selection. The especial oracle whom he theory and some practice. And so armed consults in criminal law isdeserted for another he goes down to the Law Courts to be if his problem relate to ejectment, and the " called with a throng of interesting and man who has written a book is beset by interested spectators, whose looks of pride seekers after knowledge on the subject of his are mingled with frank sorrow for the men treatise. But in no case is the oracle dumb. of an older generation, when their briefs The books and briefs are thrown aside, and shall be taken away by this View Gil Bias, — State business itself may wait while the com "huitième merveille du monde." plicated issues of Smith v. Jones, being an He finds himself one of an army of such action for nuisance, and surely the strangest portents who sit daily in the outer court farrago ever enunciated by a first-briefed watching for such crumbs as fall from the and excited junior, engages the attention of solicitors' table. In the six years that follow "Musing o'er the cases old. All that Ventris, Viner, Comyn, Saunders, Vesey, East have told,