LEGAL EDUCATION, education for the practice of the law. It takes on two chief forms: education in the office of an established practitioner; and education in a law school. The first method is by far the older, and is still continued; the second is rapidly coming to prevail, and is greatly superior. The first is largely the method of the apprentice; and is sub ject to the disadvantages of disorderli ness in form, narrowness in content, and superficiality in result. The second rep resents real educational conditions, ways, means, and results. Of the first and earlier method little need be said: the present article is devoted to the second method,—legal education through the law school.
In point of time the earliest American law school was established in the little, historic town of Litchfield, Connecticut, in the historic year of 1784. Its founder was the able lawyer and outstanding jurist of his time, Tapping Reeve. It maintained a high record for thirty-five years, and educated about thirty men each year.
The second school was established in 1817, at Harvard University; and in its integral association with a university represents the method generally obtain ing in making a law school a part of a university foundation. The more fam ous of the schools, subsequently founded, are that of Yale in 1843, that of the University of Pennsylvania in 1852, and, in or about 1859, the three schools of the University of Michigan, of Columbia University, and of Northwestern Uni versity (originally founded as the Union Law School of Chicago), and, in or about 1892, the schools of Western Reserve University and of the University of Chi cago. From year to year the State Uni versities have established schools. There are now registered in the Reports of the United States Commissioner of Educa tion one hundred and twenty-four schools, with an annual attendance of 22,880 students. These figures are based on statistics given in the report of the United States Commissioner of Educa tion, issued 1917. Figures in the latest report, 1918, affected by war conditions, were a little over one-half the previous year. One hundred law schools in the
United States reported an attendance of 10,998 men and 820 women, making a total of 11,818 students for 1917-1918.
Admission to the schools represents a wide variety of standards. In a few schools evidence of the possession of a good nioral character is the chief condi tion. In the better schools graduation from a good high school is required. In a few schools—and as a consequent gen erally regarded as the best—either two, or three, or four, years of study in a college of liberal learning, are requisite for admission. The present tendency is toward an increase in the requirements.
The course of study in the schools, usu ally covering three years, includes such fundamental and primary subjects as contracts, criminal law, torts, property, agency, equity, evidence, insurance, pub lic utilities, trusts, damages, law of per sons, conflict of laws, constitutional law, corporations, partnerships, bankruptcy, quasi-contracts, jurisprudence, adminis trative law, history of the common law, patent law, and professional ethics. In certain schools, as Harvard, the special laws or procedure in several of the indi vidual commonwealths is considered. The variety of subjects of the course of study increases, as laws increase in num ber, and as society becomes more com plex.
The profession of the law is a practical profession. Those who enter upon the study of it as a science, do so in order to use it as an art. They learn law in order to practice it. But the right to practice it, the individual State or Com monwealth controls within its own terri tory. The standards which the different States set up for the exercise of this right manifest a variety from the "pos sessing of a good moral character" to the passing of a hard and prolonged exam ination in the science of the law itself. Such an examination is commonly, and to a certain degree always in the charge of either the Supreme Court or the Bar Association of the State.