II. THE PRESENT

Legal education has made great advances during the past 16 years in all four of the features discussed in the preceding pages.

IMPROVED ORGANIZATION OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION

The improvement has been especially marked in the field of professional organization. The American Bar Association has increased in membership more than sixfold-from 3,690, or 3 per cent of the total number of lawyers, to 23,559, or 17 per cent. The gain, having been stimulated by an active "drive." is not all good; the percentage of the total membership who attended the annual meeting fell from 9 per cent in 1910 to less than 7 per cent in 1925; but even so the actual number of members in attendance rose from 326 to the imposing figure of nearly 1,700.

Of more importance than mere size were (1) the establishment, in 1915, of a quarterly periodical, which developed in 1920 into the present ably edited monthly Journal of the American Bar Association; (2) the beginnings of cooperation with State and local bar associations through the establishment, in 1916, of an active Conference of Bar Association Delegates; and (3) the adoption, in 1919, of constitutional changes by virtue of which the former system of mutually independent committees and sections has been remodeled. Each "section," including that devoted to "Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar," now chooses that particular "Council of the American Bar Association" which is concerned with the same subject matter.

Meanwhile, the Association of American Law Schools has likewise grown from an organization of 37 to one of 61 law schools in continental United States, or 63, counting schools in the Philippine Islands and Canada. Expressed in percentages, it now includes, not 29 per cent, but 37 per cent of the total number of schools. Since 1914 the regular annual meeting of this association, instead of being submerged, as previously, in the large summer gathering of the American Bar Association, has been held independently during the Christmas vacation. This official severance of the two organizations has made for much more successful meetings on the part of the schoolmen than was possible when their sessions had to be fitted into the interstices of the bar association's program. An anticipated loss of influence with the practitioners was averted by the scheduling of a special meeting in the summer of 1920, in conjunction with the bar association. Through this maneuver control of the machinery of the reorganized Section and Council on Legal Education was placed in hands sympathetic with the Association of Ameri

can Law Schools. A special committee was appointed to make recommendations looking to the improvement of those admitted to the bar. The following year the recommendations of this committee were adopted by the section and by the American Bar Association, and in 1922 were indorsed, with certain modifying interpretations and explanations, by the Conference of Bar Association Delegates at a special meeting held in Washington, D. C. During these same years, 1921 and 1922, the Association of American Law Schools specifically indorsed the action of the American Bar Association, and brought its own membership requirements into conformity with these now orthodox standards; the requisite amendments to its articles of association became fully effective in the autumn of 1925.

It is significant that in this important movement, as in the still more notable organization of the American Law Institute, mentioned in the following section, the lead was taken by schoolmen. That they should now be so highly regarded as to make this possible is a measure of the progress that has been made toward unifying the forces of reform.

Another instance of cooperative effort that may properly be mentioned in this connection was even more directly stimulated by developments in the field of medical education. The year 1910 had witnessed the publication of the Carnegie bulletin, Medical Education in the United States and Canada. Although not written by a physician, the data used in its preparation had been secured in cooperation with the Council on Medical Education. The volume had been warmly welcomed by the medical profession as an aid in its successful campaign against inferior medical schools; in addition, because of the wide publicity which it gave to this campaign, it suggested to lawyers that they might profitably learn from physicians how to improve their own system of education. The first manifestation of this new inclination to follow the lead of a sister profession was, naturally enough, an attempt to induce the Carnegie Foundation to perform for legal education a service similar to that which it had already rendered in the medical field. During the winter of 1912-13 formal requests to this effect were made both by the American Bar Association, through its committee on legal education, and by the Association of American Law Schools through its executive committee. The inquiry was promptly organized under the general direction of one whose previous training had been acquired in the field of politics or government, rather than in that of its technical subdivision, professional law. Practicing lawyers and law teachers have contributed generously of their time to give

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Bulletin No. 4, by Abraham Flexner.

to the successive volumes published by the Foundation whatever merit they possess. The facts that have been accumulated, and the conclusions which have been drawn from these facts, have aroused general interest in the legal profession. The Carnegie Foundation is not engaged in propaganda in support of the views expressed by the individual authors of these volumes, or in support of any other views. Its studies must, however, be fairly included in any enumeration of organized efforts to assist the progress of legal education.

METHOD AND AIM OF LEGAL EDUCATION

A considerable advance has been made also toward reaching a general agreement as to the merits and limitations of the case method. The publication, as part of the Carnegie inquiry, of Redlich's study of the case method did a good deal to clear up misunderstandings in regard to its nature, and largely dispelled lingering doubts as to its essential value. It has now without question displaced lectures and textbooks as the orthodox method of legal education in this country.

On the other hand, the primary justification for the method was shown by Professor Redlich to lie in the peculiar nature of AngloAmerican law. Building on this foundation, the view was expressed in a subsequent volume of the same series, Training for the Public Profession of the Law, that the method was peculiarly appropriate to the United States for the reason that here the law was peculiarly confused. The multiplicity of our jurisdictions, each with its court of last resort, produces a tangle of legal principles, the reduction of which to systematic form has hitherto defied the efforts of textbook writers. Undoubtedly, therefore, the case method of preparing law students for their professional responsibilities is at present the method that is best adapted to this country. For, as its advocates rightly claim, it is the method which best develops that power of legal reasoning which is essential, both to practitioners and to scholars, in dealing with the refractory material of American law. For its full success, however, certain conditions must exist in the law schools themselves. Furthermore, even when these conditions are present, attention was called to the fact that the necessity of employing this valuable but cumbersome method has squeezed out

5 The following three bulletins have been already published for gratuitous distribution: No. 8, The Common Law and the Case Method in American University Law Schools, by Josef Redlich, 1915; No. 13, Justice and the Poor, by Reginald Heber Smith, 1919; No. 15, Training for the Public Profession of the Law, by Alfred Z. Reed, 1921. A fourth bulletin, bearing the title Present-Day Law Schools, is announced as now passing through the press. In addition, the Foundation issues an annual pamphlet which reviews recent progress and gives certain details as to bar admission requirements and law schools.

of the student's preparation many elements that it would be desirable, if possible, to restore. It was suggested that case method scholars might profitably turn their attention to the task of making our law simpler, and, to this end, engage in the production of good textbooks.

Since the publication of these views, the American Law Institute has been organized, in 1923, primarily for the purpose of reducing the present chaos of legal precedents to something like intelligible form. Should this body accomplish as much as the character of its membership and scheme of operation give reasonable ground to hope, it may be that at some date in the far future the case method will be valued principally for its service in training legal scholars to perform a monumental task. Meanwhile, the suggestion that, for training present-day practitioners, the method possesses, along with its paramount advantages, likewise certain drawbacks, may have had some slight influence both in the schools that employ it and in those that do not. The orthodox schools, feeling that an old partisan discussion has finally resulted in their triumph, may be a trifle more ready to recognize the defects of their qualities, and to consider what remedies, if any, can be presently supplied. Schools where conditions are unfavorable are perhaps less inclined to make pretensions inconsistent with the instructional methods which their teachers are, and ought to be, actually employing.

STRENGTHENED BAR ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS

The basis of the present standard requirements for admission to the bar is to be found in certain resolutions that were drafted by a committee of prominent practitioners, headed by the Hon. Elihu Root, in 1921. As already stated, these resolutions were formally adopted the same year both by the Section on Legal Education of the American Bar Association and by the association itself. They read as follows:

(1) The American Bar Association is of the opinion that every candidate for admission to the bar should give evidence of graduation from a law school complying with the following standards:

(a) It shall require as a condition of admission at least two years of study in a college.

The institute is composed of higher judges and the heads of bar associations, learned societies, and association law schools, ex officio, together with a limited list of elective members. Its stated aims are "to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific work." At present it is devoting a portion of its energies to the preparation of a draft code of criminal procedure. Its principal immediate objective, however, is to restate successive branches of the law in such form as to relieve the courts from the burden which is now frequently imposed upon them of attempting to reconcile conflicting judicial decisions in a large number of coordinate jurisdictions.

(b) It shall require its students to pursue a course of three years' duration if they devote substantially all of their working time to their studies, and a longer course, equivalent in the number of working hours, if they devote only part of their working time to their studies.

(c) It shall provide an adequate library available for the use of the students.

(d) It shall have among its teachers a sufficient number giving their entire time to the school to insure actual personal acquaintance and influence with the whole student body.

(2) The American Bar Association is of the opinion that graduation from a law school should not confer the right of admission to the bar, and that every candidate should be subjected to an examination by public authority to determine his fitness.

Since then these original standards have been somewhat relaxed through qualifying interpretations placed upon them by the Council on Legal Education. The proposed admission requirement of two college years must be read in the light of the following official statement:

A school which admits certain students who do not fully meet the requirements will not be considered as failing to comply with standard (a), provided the number of such students does not exceed 10 per cent of its enrollment.

Again, for the purpose of applying standard (b), the council has been compelled to face the question, "How long must a part-time course be in order to be equivalent in the number of working hours to a three-year full-time course?" The following ruling establishes an extraordinarily low official figure:

A part-time course of at least 160 weeks, covering four school years. is the equivalent of a three-year full-time course. This action is the same as that taken by the Association of American Law Schools on the same problem.

Finally, although the original standards were in general indorsed at a special session of the Conference of Bar Association Delegates held in Washington, D. C., in February, 1922, considerable opposition was expressed. In order to meet some of the objections the proponents of the ratifying resolutions included in them the following:

We indorse, with the following explanations, the standards with respect to admission to the bar adopted by the American Bar Association on September 1, 1921:

**

Since the legal profession has to do with the administration of the law, and since public officials are chosen from its ranks more frequently than from the ranks of any other profession or business, it is essential that the legal profession should not become the monopoly of any economic class. We indorse the American Bar Association's standards for admission to the bar because we are convinced that no such monopoly will result from adopting them. In almost every part of the country a young man of small means can, by energy and perseverance, obtain the college and law-school education which the standards require. And we understand that in applying the rule requiring two