IN THE UNITED STATES. In Anterica. as else where, legal education was once obtained exclu sively in lawyers' offices. Professorships entitled professorships of law, but devoted. it would seem, to popular and not technical views of law to undergraduate college students and to the general public, were founded rather curly. e.g. at William and .Nlary College in 1779, at the t.ollege of Philaddphia in 1790, at Colum bia Colbn. in 1791, and at Harvard College in 1515 under the will of a testator who died in 1781. It is not clear when lectures were de livered under the first of these professorships by its earliest i nen mbent, Chancellor Wythe. The professorship at Philadviphia resulted in a course of lectures by -Justice Wilson. in 1790-91. The professorship at Columbia was twice held by Chancellor Kent, first from 1793 to 1795. and secondly from 1823 to 182fl; and the work of Nent's second holding of the professorship was of a technical nature and produced the Commen taries on .t tin ricer& Law. The Harvard profes sorship. called the was first held by Isaac Parker.
The earliest class-11)0m instruction in technical law was furnished not at the eolleges named, but in the famous private law school founded at Litchfield, Conn., by Tapping Reeve awl main tamed until 1833. This institution, though unincorporated, was thoroughly organized, having a course of fourteen months, pursuing the lecture system. conducting examinations and moot courts, and attracting in some as many as fifty students front parts of the United States. Thus itt the ease of Litchfield it is clear that there was a law school, whereas in some other eo-es it is ditlieult to say whether there was a law school or simply an ordinary law office pay ing extraordinary attention to law students. The :Harvard Law School dates from 1817, when there were two professors and when students who had completed their general education began to come to Harvard for professional instruction: but the Harvard Law School was not conspicuous until Iti29, when Justice Story became Dane pro fessor of law. There was a private law school
in ISA at Needham, Va.: and that, though it lasted but a short time. it was carefully managed is indicated by Taylor's Journal of the Law Sehool. There was a private law school at Northampton, Alass., in 1S23; and this school ceased in 1S29, when one of its instructors be came 11oyall professor at _Harvard. The Yale Law School elates from 1S24, being apparently an outgrowth of a private school. There was a private law school at Winehester. Va., in 1S2G, and during its short existence it produced Tuck er's Com mcntaries on the Lairs of Virgi»ia. The law school of the University of Virginia was opened in 1820. The Cincinnati Law School was opened in 1833.
There has been a steady growth of law schools in number and in attendance; and in recent years this growth has been so emphatic as to prove that the law schools are now recognized as the only places for obtaining adequate prepara tion. In there were 54 law schools. with 406 instructors and 5252 students. In 1900-01 there were 100 law• schools, with 1103 instructors and 13.642 students. The numerical advances in these ten years were accompanied by other changes, most of them unquestionably changes for the better. The requirements for admission have been increased. so that now half of the schools require at least a high-school education, and three or four require a degree in arts or in science. The law course has been lengthened, on the average, about one year, so that now rather more than half of the schools offer a course of three years. There has been a tendency to change the method of study from the lecture and text book systems to the case system, which was in troduced at Harvard by Professor Langdell iu 1870, and which gained a foothold at the .1.1bany Law School in 1889, and at the State University of Iowa and Columbia University in 1890.