We have at Oxford one institution or arrangement which is excellent so far as it goes as to the time in which it permits a man to obtain a law degree. After he has taken an arts or any other degree, if he desires to study law with a view to taking a special law degree, the special law degree may be obtained in one year. Our professors are beginning to pay attention to the civil law degree, and accordingly the special examination for the degree of civil law is based on the antecedent academic examination, and from my experience I can say that sometimes candidates show not merely what you may call text-book or classknowledge of the subject, but a real grasp of legal problems and principles. That is, I think, the most valuable academic institution that we have at present in England for the university study of law and the encouragement of legal research. It is possible of course for a man to come to Oxford or Cambridge and pursue a special course of legal research, and ultimately obtain a law degree upon it, but such examples are so infrequent that I do not think they materially affect the question. I do not know whether my learned friend, Mr. Hazeltine, has said anything about it in that part of his paper which has not been read, and I know nothing of my own knowledge as to the courses of law study and examinations at other universities.

As to Durham, perhaps I had better explain what Durham is. Durham is a small theological university, which is developed to a large extent by the intelligent inhabitants of Newcastle-onTyne. Nothing is ever heard of Durham except on theological subjects, so you need not trouble yourself very much about how they study law at Durham.

In England we have lectures and examinations, but we have no definite and prescribed course of study. We do not compel a man to go to lectures. I say we," because as I have been for about two and a half years a member of the Council of Legal Education, which has been described to you by my learned friend, I have my little share of the responsibilities of what we do in the Inns of Court. We do not require that a man shall have actually attended the lectures, or indeed that he shall have done anything except eat, or appear to eat, a certain number of dinners in the

hall of his special Inn. The examination is but an indirect encouragement to a man to attend lectures. It is attempted so to arrange the examinations that they shall be much more difficult for those who have not attended the lectures. I think myself that this is a bad arrangement, and that to do indirectly what we can and ought to do directly is not worthy of the Inns of Court. I merely state that, however, as my opinion.

With regard to the primary education of the student, we have a standard, although it is not a very high one, and in practice considerable difficulty is found in enforcing even that standard, where students at the Inns of Court are supposed to know Latin, and our university students are supposed to know much more. Certain men who come up, not for the pass examination but for honors, and while being examined in law, show just sufficient knowledge of Latin to stumble through an examination in Justinian's Institutes. I have seen an Oxford man presenting himself for a law degree who could not construe a sentence from Justinian when the book was put in his hand. When I became a member of the Council of Legal Education, I heard of a man preparing for examination in one of the Inns of Court, who took a pocket edition of the Institutes of Justinian, and began to read it at South Kensington, and by the time he had arrived by the underground route at the Temple, a space of four miles or thereabouts, he knew enough about it to pass. I would not like to believe that a good thing. Our standards are rather low, and we are rather slack in enforcing even those standards, and the reason is simply that a great many of our lawyers do not believe that law can be taught at all, or that the serious teaching of law is a thing really worth the attention of our professional governing bodies.

The late Lord Selborne found considerable difficulty in his attempts to found a really adequate law school in London, and you must not suppose that we are altogether satisfied with what we have done. I agree with my learned friend that we have the advantage of an ancient and complicated machinery, which is set to grind out work to which it is not particularly adapted.

Our Law Society, I think, had its origin about 1820, and is a

much better organized and more efficient organization than we barristers have, but all these things are parts of institutions which are encumbered by an ancient history.

I am not sure that you will have gathered from the paper what a sharp distinction is made in our profession between the academic and the professional teaching of law. Our professors do not pretend to teach law in a professional manner. They have not the means for it. What they do profess, is to add to the ordinary academic education such instruction in the theoretical doctrines of law, as will make a man more capable of profiting by professional instruction, when he comes to it. That I think is the theory, so far as we have any theory.

I do not think that there is anything which I can add to the lucid and accurate exposition which you have heard from my friend, Mr. Hazeltine.

The President:

The Chair is permitted to call upon Mr. James Barr Ames, of Harvard Law School, to continue the discussion of the paper. James Barr Ames, of Massachusetts:

Mr. President and Gentlemen: As I listened to the enlightening account of education in law in England I found myself thinking what a striking illustration of English conservatism it was. As you know, for centuries on the Continent of Europe the university law school has been the regular, indeed the only avenue to practice. We began in this country nearly a hundred years ago to take by custom, not by law, a similar path, and we have been advancing very rapidly in the last half century, especially in the last twenty-five years. In England, on the other hand, the bulk of the men who fit themselves for the profession do not take university courses in law, and, as I am told, those who do attend them are not the best men of the university. One wonders why that should be so. It seems to me that the reason why the English are satisfied not to change their present institutions in the matter of legal education is that somehow or other, of all jurisdictions administering the English law, the mother country does turn out the best Bench, the best Bar and the best law books.

Of course I think they succeed in spite of the want of legal education at the universities. Lawyers in England are concentrated in London, the bulk of them, and the competition there is keener than anything we know of in this country. The judges, of course, are there the best men in the profession because the prizes are so great. You do not find the best lawyers in England declining an offer of the Bench except under exceptional circumstances.

The experience of England is not an argument against university education in law. If they had a better system of education they would have even better fitted men and produce better law books than they do now. I wish it were possible that a hundred or two hundred of the best young graduates of our best schools could be transported to England and given an opportunity to compete on equal terms with the Englishmen of a corresponding age. I have very little doubt that our graduates would carry off the prizes and that there would be a very sudden awakening as to the need of reform in legal education in England. But if this suggestion is an idle dream, it is my belief that in the next generation, America, through her university law faculties, will take the lead in legal instruction. When that happens, English lawyers are likely to examine seriously their system of preparation for admission to the Bar.

The President:

The matter is now open for discussion.

Hollis R. Bailey, of Massachusetts:

I would like to ask Mr. Hazeltine if I am right in thinking that law graduates from Cambridge and Oxford are still required to take a three-years' clerkship in an office before they are eligible to become solicitors. I was told that two years ago, and I suppose that is true. I asked Mr. Jenks why that was, and suggested we did not do that in America. Well, he said, the men that come from Oxford and Cambridge down to London to become solicitors are very immature, and three years is not too long. It seems quite unusual to require a three-year clerkship in the case of persons having the degree of LL. B.

Harold D. Hazeltine, of England:

Yes, that is the case. The regular clerkship is usually five years before the man can be admitted to the roll of solicitor, but in case he is a university graduate, that term of five years is reduced to three years.

There being no further discussion, the Association then adjourned until Thursday, August 26, 1909, at 2.30 P. M.

The President:

SECOND SESSION.

Thursday, August 26, 1909, 2.30 P. M.

The first business will be the paper by John H. Wigmore and Frederic B. Crossley, of Northwestern University, on the subject of "A Statistical Comparison of College and High School Education as a Preparation for Legal Scholarship," and I have the pleasure of presenting Dean Wigmore.

John H. Wigmore, of Northwestern University:

Mr. President and Members of the Assication: My colleague in this paper has kindly consented that I shall speak for us both; but we do not desire to trouble you by going over all the details that have been printed beforehand for your consideration; all that we care to do now is to make a few running comments as to the scope and the spirit of our inquiry.

(The Paper follows these Minutes, page 941.) John H. Wigmore (after briefly summarizing the paper): Two aspects of the subject we wish to emphasize to you here. 1. The scope of our presentation is strictly limited to the third matter stated on the first page; that is to say, the third supposed argument for requiring a college education preliminarily to the admission to a law school in this Association. The spirit of that inquiry is to force into emphasis the importance of testing our assumption by results so far as practicable. Hitherto a certain proposition has been assumed. Let us test that assumption inductively, scientifically, before going any farther. That is the spirit in which we approach the subject, not a spirit of antagonism to any special question, but merely a spirit of asking