Tlic Educational Status of the Legal Profession.
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THE EDUCATIONAL STATUS OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION By EDWIN G. DEXTER,
Professor of Education in the University of Illinois. ACCORDING to the figures given in the as a whole is better educated than it was, annual reports of the United States so far as that education has to do with the work of the professional school. That Commission of Education, there were gradu is, that there is a considerably larger percent ated from schools and colleges of law during age of Bachelors of Law among those prac the twenty-five years from 1876 to 1900, roughly 45,000 persons, mostly males. The tising before the bar to-day, than there was a annual output of Bachelors of Law from these generation ago. This is not at all to be institutions has varied considerably from year wondered at, considering the rapid increase in the number of law schools, and the greater to year, the smallest class for the period being stress that is put upon preparation along all that of 1885, with but 744 members, while the professional lines. largest, that of 1900 contained 3241. Dur It is possible, by a comparison of the ing the twenty-five years there was in gen number of graduates in law during the last eral, however, a very marked increase in the twenty-five years, with the total number of output; the average number graduating an lawyers practising to-day, to determine nually for the first five years of the period roughly the percentage of the whole who being 1128, while for the last five, the aver are professionally educated. As has been age was 3040. A comparison of these fig stated, the number of the former is about ures gives us an increase of 169 per cent, for the quarter of a century, in professionally 45,000. If none of these had died during educated lawyers. The figures do not hold the period and there had been no legal gradu true, however, for the legal profession as a ates from classes previous to 1875 alive at whole, since they take no account of those! the end of it, the ratio of 45,000: 114,723 or who entered it without the law school diplo .39 would represent this percentage. It is ma. Ve have to turn to the figures of certain, however, both that previous gradu the loth and I2th census for light on that ates were alive and that later ones have point and we find from the first that there died. At the number of the former we can were in our country in 1880, 64,137 who only guess. Life insurance tables of mor made a living, or tried to, through the prac tality throw some light on the number of the tice of law, while, twenty years later the latter. Taking the probable age of gradua number had swelled to 114,723, an increase tion from the law school as twenty-five years, of 78 per cent. we find that the average annual mortality for the next twenty-five years, the length of the From these two sets of figures we see that the professionally educated lawyers have in period considered, is roughtly ten per 1000, creased 169 per cent, in roughly twenty-five and a somewhat complicated computation years, as based upon the annual output, shows that about 4000 of our 45,000 should while the number of lawyers of all degrees have died previous to 1900. That is, there of education has increased only 79 per were alive in 1900, according to the laws of probable mortality 41,000 garduates of the cent, in but a little less time. The neces sary inference is, that the legal fraternity last twenty-five law classes. This fact in it
