years of study in a college, educational experience other than that acquired in an American college may in proper cases be accepted as satisfying the requirement of the rule, if equivalent to two years of college work. We believe that the adoption of these standards will increase the efficiency and strengthen the character of those coming to the practice of law, and will therefore tend to improve greatly the administration of justice. We therefore urge the bar associations of the several States to draft rules of admission to the bar carrying the standards into effect and to take such action as they may deem advisable to procure their adoption.

Whenever any State does not at present afford such educational opportunities to young men of small means as to warrant the immediate adoption of the standards, we urge the bar associations of the State to encourage and help the establishment and maintenance of good law schools and colleges, so that the standards may become practicable as soon as possible.

The concluding declaration that these standards are not everywhere practicable has proved to have greater weight than the optimistic assertion that "in almost every part of the country " they are. The concession has done more to dampen the ardor of bar admission reformers than the initial hortatory passages have accomplished in inflaming their zeal. Over four years have elapsed since the passage of the original resolutions by the American Bar Association, and still not a single State conforms to all of these standards, even in their later modified form. Only one State has followed the fundamental recommendation that all applicants for admission to the bar must graduate from a law school. Only four States require, before the period of law study begins, even the equivalent of two years of college training.s

This outcome of recent professional activities has been a disappointment to some of the participants. If the existing situation be compared, however, with that which existed a few years ago, it will be found that there are at least three grounds for encouragement.

In the first place, it is a great gain to have secured even temporary harmony among so many professional organizations and factions. Hitherto, practitioners and schoolmen, committees and sections, national associations and local associations have pressed forward on divergent paths toward their common goal. It is not so important that they should be surely headed and rapidly moving in the right direction as it is that they should now at last be united in their search for the true avenue of reform. Whether it be the road they are now traveling or another one, they are more apt to find it if they search for it together.

In the second place, false starts should not be regarded as wasted efforts. Rather are they an inevitable part of the process of spying

7 West Virginia (beginning 1926).

• Kansas, Illinois (beginning 1926), West Virginia (beginning 1926), Ohio (beginning 1927).

out the land. The present orthodox plan of reforming the conditions under which applicants are admitted to the practice of the law calls for the imposition of certain uniform requirements. It is only on the basis of knowledge gained through this movement that it can be determined what are the defects of the plan, whether in the details of the requirements or in the attempt to impose them upon all applicants uniformly.

Finally, even though the precise aims of the standardizing organization seem now not likely to be realized, their formulation has stimulated general interest in the problem among legislators, judges, and examining boards. About 20 States have done at least something to improve their primitive admission systems.

PROGRESS IN LAW-SCHOOL REQUIREMENTS

Among law schools there has been much greater progress, notably as respects the aspect of legal education emphasized in standards (a) and (b) of the American Bar Association-the time that students are required to devote to their studies. The activities of the new Council on Legal Education in drawing up an approved list of law schools have been reinforced by the increased membership requirements of the Association of American Law Schools, with the result that in two of the three elements involved in this time computation there has been a positively spectacular advance. The number of law schools announcing a course of less than three academic years has been reduced from 40 to 8. The number of schools announcing an entrance requirement supposed to be the equivalent of two college years or over has been increased from 10 to 81, or eightfold. The combined effect of lengthening two-year professional courses and requiring also preliminary college work has been to increase the number of full-time three-year law schools, with entrance requirements of two college years or more, from 8 to 65, or, again, eightfold. This betters even the record of progress made in building up medical schools of a roughly corresponding type. During the same period the number of full-time four-year medical schools with similar entrance requirements increased from 16 to 74, or less than fivefold.

Unfortunately for the comparison, this is only part of the story. It is true that the legal profession, like the medical profession, has recently been signally successful in building up schools that demand the full time of their students during five or six years. What proportion, however, do these constitute of the total number of schools?

In medical education such schools constitute 92 per cent of the total number. The explanation of this high figure is that the number of full-time schools has dwindled from 136 to 79, of which all except 5 maintain the standard entrance requirement; and that, of

the original group of 4 part-time medical schools, only a single survivor remains. In a word, the favored type has succeeded in driving virtually all competitors from the field, with a resultant great decrease in the number of medical schools in general. During the past few years a similar development has occurred in dental education.

In legal education, on the other hand, the total number of fulltime schools has increased since 1910 from 64 to 76, or 19 per cent. The total number of part-time and mixed schools has increased much more rapidly from 60 to 91, or over 50 per cent. These schools, which in 1909-10 already constituted nearly one-half of the total number of law schools, comprise now 54 per cent of the total. By contrast, full-time three-year law schools, with entrance requirements of two college years or more, in spite of their recent great increase, to-day number only 39 per cent of the total number of law schools.

The following table, constructed on the same plan as that on page 26, shows how successful standardizing efforts have been in converting nearly all surviving medical schools into a single improved type. It also shows how the result of corresponding activities in legal education has been an even greater diversification of types than existed when this movement began.

Medical schools and law schools classified according to the time required, after completion of the high school, to obtain the degree, 1925-26

These schools conform to the now orthodox medical standard of at least two years in college, followed by full-time professional study.

This comparison provides food for thought, rather than an occasion for lamentation. The primary reason for the great variety which the table shows to exist among law schools (16 separate groups of schools, classified according to student time, as compared

with 3 groups of medical schools) is that part-time work has not only firmly established itself in legal education, but has been affected, like full-time work, by the movement to lengthen the law course and to increase entrance requirements. This is certainly a salutary development, so far as it goes. Furthermore, although most lawyers and law teachers will probably regret that, whereas in 1910 there were fewer law schools than medical schools, there are now twice as many schools of law, it is difficult to demonstrate convincingly that our present machinery for providing legal education exceeds our social need. Finally, even the circumstance that a favored type of institution, superior to all others as respects the demands it makes upon the time of its students, includes only a minority of law schools, while the majority all differ widely among themselves, may provoke two very different emotional reactions. To those who are unqualifiedly committed to the present standardizing movement, it must, as above intimated, seem unfortunate that so many law schools decline to be standardized. On the other hand, it is possible that here, as in the field of bar admission requirements, the trouble may lie, not in inadequate response to reformatory efforts, but in the program of reform itself. If this be true, we should welcome the experience gained during this period of partial success as a basis for making an enlightened revision of plans for the future.

III. THE FUTURE

In comparison with the situation in which they found themselves 16 years ago, it is clear that the lawyers have made great progress. Judged, however, by their needs or by the record of other professions, they still have a long distance to go. Whether because of their backwardness, or because of inherent and ineradicable differences between law and medicine, they have not been anything like so successful as the physicians in building up an effective system of professional preparation and supervision.

In the section immediately following, several of the still unsolved problems or unsatisfied needs of legal education will be briefly noted, in the same order as in the previous discussion. These will be followed by a more extended treatment of that topic which in its immediate importance transcends all others evening or part-time instruction and its influence upon the organization of the legal profession.

MISCELLANEOUS PROBLEMS AWAITING SOLUTION

The American Bar Association, thanks to its successful membership drive, enjoys increased financial resources. As an offset to this undoubted gain, it has become too large to be regarded as a select or a

compactly efficient body, and yet is not large enough to include, among its own members, more than a small minority of the American legal profession. Its vigorous but highly anomalous section, or conference, of delegates from State and local bar associations hardly does more than point the way to that more thorough-going adoption of the representative principle which has proved such a source of strength to the American Medical Association. The Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is a great improvement upon the former mutually independent committee and section dealing with the same topics; but it still needs a compensated official staff to enable it to exert an influence comparable to that of its model, the Council on Medical Education. The ably edited American Bar Association Journal, with its 60 or 70 monthly pages, constitutes perhaps as heavy a dose of periodical literature concerned with matters of general professional interest as the average American lawyer can at present digest; it compares with the 70 or 80 pages every week that makes up the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lawyers can show nothing resembling the elaborate studies of medical schools and licensing tests that appear annually in the educational and State board numbers of this periodical; nor have they anything analogous to the official American Medical Directory, the latest (1925) edition of which lists 161,358 physicians, with information as to the education of each and the date at which he secured his license to practice.

The establishment of the American Law Institute is an event of the greatest importance in the development of legal research. It marks the fruition of 50 years of scholarly labor under the case method. It provides a definite objective for hitherto rather purposeless postgraduate schools of law. Yet, the aggregate of time and of money that is now devoted to legal research of every sort is positively trivial to what is spent in medical institutes and medical schools.

Bar admission requirements, though improving, are still, in almost every State, less severe than the requirements for a license to practice medicine. The following table reveals the extent to which the States conform to certain standards that have been regarded as essential both by the American Bar Association and by the American Medical Association.

Comparison between bar admission and medical licensing requirements in 48 States and the District of Columbia, 1925