CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS.

BY

JAMES BARR AMES,

OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL.

Just twenty-five years ago, at the second meeting of the American Bar Association, the standing Committee on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar made its first report. It seemed to your Chairman that, in preparing the customary address, he could not do better than to review the action of the Association, of the successive Committees on Legal Education, and of our own Section, during the last quarter of a century, pointing out how far the course of legal education has conformed to the recommendations of these bodies and making certain suggestions as to future policy.

The earliest recommendation of the Committee on Legal Education was a resolution in 1879 that "the several state and other local Bar Associations be respectfully requested to recommend and further in their respective states the maintenance of schools of law." After discussion at the meeting of the following year, the American Bar Association adopted this resolution. At that time, 1880, there were forty-three law schools in twenty-four states and the District of Columbia. The students in these schools numbered a little over 3000. At the present time there are one hundred and eight law schools in thirty-five states and the District of Columbia; 3 and the number of students falls a little short of 15,000. In the light of these figures, as was said in the last report of the Committee on Legal Education "the law schools no longer need the fostering care of the Bar as they formerly did." This nearly

12 A. B. A. R., 235.

23 A. B. A. R., 44.

There is no law school in Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming.

fivefold increase in the number of students in the law schools explains also why we no longer hear any discussion of the question, formerly much debated, whether a lawyer's office or a law school is the better place for the study of law. This question is still open in England, but ultimately will be decided there in the same way as with us, for the hopes, often disappointed, of Lord Westbury, Lord Selborne, Lord Russell and others, for the establishment of a general school of law in London, it would seem, are likely to be realized before another quarter of a century goes by. When the conservatism of the English Bar finally yields, the result will be due in no small measure to the development and success of American law schools.

While the diversion of the law student from the office to the school is altogether gratifying, the same cannot be said of the rapid increase of law schools. Twelve years ago the Committee on Legal Education deprecated the needless multiplication of law schools. It is more emphatically true to-day than it was then, that it would be better for the country if a considerable number of the schools should disappear. Contrast, for example, with the five law schools for New England, four in the city and ten in the State of New York, six in Chicago and ten in Illinois, seven in the District of Columbia and ten in Tennessee. Obviously the sense of proportion is not much. regarded in the number and distribution of our law schools.

In 1881 the American Bar Association adopted unanimously the recommendation of the Committee on Legal Education "that the state and other Bar Associations be requested to recommend, and further, in all law schools as soon as practicable, a general and thorough course of instruction under an adequate number of professors, said course to be duly divided for ordinary purposes into studies and exercises of the first year, of the second year and of the third year."1 At the time of this vote only seven of the forty-three law schools-one in California, two in Massachusetts and four 14 A. B. A. R., 30.

in the District of Columbia-were three year schools in the sense of demanding the completion of a three year course of study as a requisite for the degree in law. The law schools were slow in responding to this recommendation of the Bar Association. Nine years later, in 1890, there were only twelve three year schools, or about one-fifth of the schools in the country, and in 1895 only seventeen, or fewer than one-fourth. In that year the Section of Legal Education, established in 1893, expressed itself very explicitly in a resolution recommending that "the American Bar Association approves the lengthening of the course of instruction in law schools to a period of three years, ," and two years later the Bar Association adopted this resolution. Since 1895 the lengthening of the law school course to three years has proceeded with most gratifying rapidity, so that to-day sixty-five of the one hundred and eight existing schools, a substantial majority, have the three year curriculum.

The geographical distribution of the three year, two year and one year law schools is noteworthy. Of the sixty-five three year schools only two are in that part of the country which lies south of the latitude of Washington and east of the Mississippi River, and those two are colored schools, with a total registration, the one of six and the other of three students. Within these same limits are all the one year schools, now fortunately only three. Formerly there were several others, but these have either become two year schools or, in a few cases, have ceased to exist. These recent extensions of the course from one to two years encourage the belief that a considerable number of the two year schools, indeed, all the truly effective ones, will see their way soon to introduce the three year curriculum and so range themselves with the majority of the schools of the country. After 1905 membership in the Association of American Law Schools will be restricted to schools which require the completion by candidates for the 1 18 A. B. A. R., 406-408.

2 20 A. B. A. R., 31-33.

degree of the full three year course. It would be greatly to be deplored if eight Southern states, because of non-compliance with this requirement, should not be represented in the Association.

A serious obstacle to the effectiveness of law schools was, and still is, in many cases the inadequate preliminary education of a considerable proportion of their students. Twentyfive years ago an examination or a certificate of graduation from a high school as a condition of admission to a law school was almost unknown. In the first thirteen reports of the American Bar Association there is no recommendation or discussion of the proper qualifications for admission to law schools. The subject was mentioned for the first time in 1891, the Committee on Legal Education of that year expressing the opinion that "admission to the school should not be restricted to the graduates of colleges, as has sometimes been proposed, but should be open to all who have a good English education,' or, as they say in another part of the report, "to all who have sufficient education and intelligence to go through their course without delaying or embarrassing their fellow students." 2 This opinion was, obviously, not so much a recommendation of a general raising of the low standard of admission then prevalent as it was a warning against the introduction in particular schools of too high a standard. Moreover, the standard of a good English education was too vague and elastic to be of much value. But in 1896 the Section of Legal Education made a determined effort to improve the preliminary education of law students by unanimously recommending the adoption by the American Bar Association of the following resolution: "That the American Bar Association is of the opinion that before a student commences the study of law it is desirable that he should have received a general education approximately equivalent to a high school course, and that persons who have not completed the equivalent of such a course should 114 A. B. A. R., 331.

214 A. B. A. R., 331.

not be admitted into law schools as candidates for a degree." 1 The following year the American Bar Association unanimously adopted this resolution, which came to it with the endorsement of the Committee on Legal Education ; but, not wishing to admit that a high school education was all that was desirable, strengthened the resolution by declaring that the entrance requirement should be at least the equivalent of a high school course. In 1900 the Association of American Law Schools restricted membership in the Association to schools requiring the completion of the equivalent of a high school course as a condition of admission to candidacy for a degree.

3

At the time of this action of the Section of Legal Education, 1896, only seven out of seventy-four schools, i. e., fewer than one-tenth, required as much as the completion of a high school course for admission to the school. In 1904 there are fiftyone such schools, i. e., nearly one-half of all the schools. Truly the reform in the matter of preliminary education has proceeded rapidly in the last eight years. But much remains to be done, so long as one-fourth of the law schools require an entrance examination representing considerably less than a high school course, and another fourth requires no examination at all for admission. Here again one is impressed by the geographical distribution of these three classes of schools. Of the schools requiring for admission to candidacy for a degree at least a high school education only one, the University of Virginia Law School, is in the territory south of the latitude of Washington and east of the Mississippi River; and in that same territory we find a majority of the schools requiring no entrance examination. Now that the University of Virginia has led the way, the other Southern schools may be expected to follow her good example.

As might be supposed, the reform in the requirements for admission, and the reform in the lengthening of the curriculum

119 A. B. A. R., 450-461.

2 20 A. B. A. R., 351.

8 20 A. B. A. R., 33, 34.