year. It speaks for a man of settled ways, a sober, careful man, who, having settled a matter once to his satisfaction, never has occasion to make a change a safe character for an attorney, which every client appreciates. Aside from other reasons for maintaining a permanency in your style of stationery, one especially appeals to us. Having once designed, settled, and established the style, you need never give it further thought. When your stock runs low, simply give an order to have it duplicated.

As to stock for your letter head, select a good twenty-pound linen or bond, without "laid" or other fancy effects. The more severely plain it is the better. As to color, white or cream is far the best, though blue and azure are popular with lawyers, and a light brown, or fawn, or canary tint may be used. We would not consider other colors or tints. Have your printer supply you with a sufficient quantity of second sheets of the same. paper, as a printed heading on each page of a letter is uncalled for and creates an unpleasant impression. The size should be 82 by 11 inches. If you prefer, you may use memorandum heads, half or two-thirds this size, for short letters, but we do not think they look nearly so well, and the saving amounts to practically nothing. The paper in 500 letter heads, full size, of 20-pound stock, costs from 45 cents to $1. So you see that you save by using the smaller sheet only from 222 cents to 50 cents on a 500 lot. Use the full-sized sheet, and in the case of a short letter, instead of allowing your stenographer to bunch the letter on the upper half of the page, have her drop it down, so as to give a nice impression of balance.

The envelopes, both 634 and 10 (official size), should be of the same quality stock as the letter heads.

using the same style of type on both. The type should be small, ordinarily not larger than 12-point (pica) for the largest line, and this is too large for the envelope. The card on the letter head should be in the center or in the corner, never clear across, unless in the case of a long firm name.

The wording should be limited to your name, profession, office, and city address. It is not bad taste to have it include your telephone number, as this may be a matter of convenience, and it is to be supposed that your relation to your correspondent is nearer than it is to the general public, whom you reach by a newspaper card.

It is not necessary that your profession should be stated on your envelope. For business reasons, the lawyer being frequently engaged in a strictly confidential capacity, many lawyers leave their names off their envelopes, substituting for it their postoffice box number.

If a firm, it is a good idea to have the individual names of all partners appear in the letter head; and if your office is organized into departments, it should bear the name of the department from which it emanates.

Business Cards

As a matter of convenience, as well as publicity, a lawyer should always be supplied with business cards. These should be printed or engraved, carrying out the general style adopted for other stationery. No good opportunity or excuse for placing one of these cards should be neglected, but they should be confined to business opportunities, and never extended to social uses.

Announcements

A good opportunity for effective advertising, which should never be over

lawyer's office is changed, or whenever there is a change in the firm. These opportunities should be utilized by sending printed or engraved announcements to every one with whom the office has ever had any dealings. It is a good plan to keep a list of addresses of all clients and possible clients for just such purposes.

Law Lists

The foreign client is the one who would be influenced by seeing your card in the local newspaper, but he has not the chance. The only way to reach him is through the Law List. Membership or representation in a good Law List is good advertising, and it is not always to be measured by the direct returns you are able to trace to it. If you have not exclusive representation in the list, it is worth while to carry with your name a few lines as to your special facilities, with banking references. If you have exclusive representation, this is not so necessary, though it may be well to do so, and certainly if your co-representative does so.

Much money is wasted in patronage of Law Lists through unintelligent selection of the list. Do not sign a contract with a list with which you are unfamiliar without making inquiry as to its business producing powers. If you have no other way of ascertaining the character of a list, pay the small membership fee in the Commercial Law League of America, and write the secretary about it. He will gladly furnish you with data from which you can judge the merits of the list.

Whenever you sign a contract with a list, see that it is as liberal as it is possible to secure. You can get desirable concessions better then than at a later time. See that all the neighboring towns and hamlets which are unrepresented, and in which you can handle business,

are referred to you. The smallest place may bring you the largest item of busi

ness.

Having secured representation in a list, do not allow your contract to expire without renewing it, unless you are sure the expense is a dead loss. The fact that your name is removed and another name substituted is apt to affect unfavorably the minds of those who have no other way of judging you.

Cultivate close relations with the list publishers. If you have occasion to use their complaint department in connection with business you have forwarded to other attorneys over the list, conduct your end of the negotiations in a manner which shall impress them with your business sense. If, perchance, the complaint department gets a complaint against you, let them have a reply as soon as possible, and let it be responsive to every allegation in the complaint, and adjust promptly anything which should be adjusted by you. The list publisher is interested in every representative in the list, and, having confidence in you, he can secure for you far more benefits than he otherwise could.

Law Lists, even those that are good producers, are of two kinds. One may confine its canvass for forwarding business to mercantile agencies and intermediate forwarders. In that case all the business which will be forwarded to you over the list will be on the basis of a division of fees, and its net results will not be so great as another list, controlling no larger volume of business, but which comes directly from clients, who do not expect a division of fees. Other lists secure business from both of these classes. Some lists require as a condition of the contract for representation that the lawyer will make free financial reports to mercantile subscribers. All these matters should be inquired into,

Many mercantile agencies and firms. of attorneys make it a condition of their sending business to an attorney that he shall pay a fee for representation in a list published by them. It is our belief that all these offers should be rejected, and that this can be done without jeopardizing any business which you might otherwise secure. These agencies invariably send business over some bonded list, regardless of any list they may pretend to publish themselves. We do not refer here to well-known mercantile agencies, known to publish lists, and also to use them in sending out business as far as possible.

Personal Representatives in Large Cities

This is a new agency for securing business, only offered to attorneys in recent years. We believe the oldest agency of the kind was established a dozen. years ago. The fact, however, that one concern of this kind has existed for even twelve years, and that it continues to represent many of the same clients it had at first, which we understand is the case, speaks well for the plan.

We know of several representatives of this kind who look after the interests of outside attorneys in New York City. They are honest, and actuated by the best of intentions toward their attorney clients, and there is no question but that in so large a forwarding center they must find frequent opportunities for rendering their clients substantial services. We believe, however, that these benefits could be increased many fold if attorneys making contracts with them would realize that in many cases where benefits may be secured it is for them to take the initiative. It happens probably more often than the other way that

York knows a way in which his representative there might help him, when the man in New York has no way of finding it out.

If you make a contract for personal representation of this kind, treat your representative just as you desire to have your clients treat you. Let him know every time there is an opportunity to help you, advising him of all facts necessary to guide his action. In other words, make him a convenience every time you can. He can save you many trips to the metropolis. He can secure business to be forwarded to you outside of regular channels, if you will advise him of its possible existence. For example, some interest in your field is likely to be the subject of litigation, and some of the parties who will want to be represented reside in New York, or can be influenced from New York. Your representative cannot possibly know anything about the matter. Write to him about it, and suggest how he can help you. These representatives do control a large amount of ordinary forwarding business, and they are also good men for you to consult in selecting a Law List, and they will aid you in securing liberal contracts with the publishers.

Unwise Advertising

We should include under this heading all cards in theater programs, hotel registers, and similar catch-penny mediums. They are unwise as an expenditure of money, and unwise as methods, even though they cost you nothing, as such efforts at publicity are far from being in good taste. Also do not allow yourself to be caught by the sleek individual who comes into your office with a proposition for running a biographical sketch of yourself, and your portrait, in a county

history just about to be issued. This is about "the worst ever" as a means of gaining publicity for a lawyer.

Joining Professional Associations

We think no lawyer makes a mistake who joins the organizations of his profession, keeps up his membership, and attends and takes part in the meetings. By all means affiliate with the local and county Bar Associations, if there are any. The state association is not an expensive project, ordinarily, and membership in it adds to your standing in the profession. If you are interested in commercial lines, join the Commercial Law League of America, and take as active a part in its business sessions as you can. The American Bar Association, course, represents the "thirty-third degree," and membership in it is a distinct advantage to any lawyer. Learn as much as you can, absorb all you can, at the meetings of any associations you do join, impress yourself on others there as much as you can, and afterwards. strengthen in every way possible the connections formed at these gatherings.

The Best Advertising

of

There is a great difference between professional advertising and any other kind. The merchant or manufacturer has something to sell which may be inspected. The lawyer has not. A lawyer is the object of much interest to every one in his community who feels that he may have occasion to employ him, or some one else. They like to take advantage of every opportunity for sizing him up. A satisfied client is the best advertisement he can have, so far as his influence extends, but often this is not very far. The next thing to having his wares on view for inspection is to be doing something worth while that will attract favor

able attention or perform a real use in the community.

Lawyers have every facility for doing such things, without expense and with practically little effort; but the trouble is that many of them lack originality, or, if a good thing does occur to them, they are quite apt not to have sufficient confidence in it to carry it out. This comes from being so constantly in an office over a desk, from too much theorizing, losing contact with active practical affairs.

A modest law office usually contains one lawyer and one stenographer, each of whom give it from eight to nine hours a day. It also contains furniture worth not less than $150, a $100 typewriter, and $250 worth of books. It consists of two rooms, an outer and a private office. We will place the rent at the modest sum of $25 per month, the stenographer's salary at $50 per month, and to this add $3 per month for a telephone.

There is no extravagance here, is there? Yet, when we think that there are few days in the year in which either the lawyer or his stenographer is busy all the time, and that, with the long summer months, when business is practically at a standstill, there are many days in which neither does anything at all, and that there are many books in the library costing nice little sums, which are not looked into from one year's end to another, we see that the waste proportioned to the amount invested is much larger than would be permitted to continue in any other business.

The druggist, for instance, puts in a soda fountain, a cigar stand, confectionery, books, and many other lines, until his store is the busiest store in town, and the clerks earn their wages every hour of the day, and his fixtures pay for themselves many times over.

The lawyer can do this as well as the

side lines in law work, all professional, and all just as much in harmony with a select practice as the side lines adopted by the druggist are to pharmacy. They will serve to employ the lawyer's spare time in a way that will increase his knowledge of the law and make him more resourceful. They will also keep stenographers and other assistants profitably employed, make the investment in library yield a constant return, and give

itself, is one of the best advertisements a lawyer can have. All the plans suggested can be conducted so that they will be direct sources of profit in themselves, and indirectly they will give him just the kind of publicity he wants. They can be carried on extensively or in a limited way, as suits the lawyer's humor, and with proper effort and attention they can be made to pay an independent income.

THE

HE most interesting question confronting legal educators at the present moment is how to prepare law students most effectively for practice. True, there are many students who do not intend to enter upon a career at the bar, studying law for its cultural value, or because it will supplement their preparation for business; but most men who complete a law course intend, or at least hope, to use it as a means of earning a livelihood. From their standpoint, therefore, it is important that legal education be genuinely and immediately helpful, that it be something more than a careful consideration of the process by which law has been evolved, something more than a discipline of the intellect, something more than a storing of the memory with a mass of legal principles. All these are important, but they are not sufficient; for they fail to fit the law graduate for that immediate service which he aspires to render.

1

His theoretical knowledge, to be available for immediate use, must be supple

mented by at least a sufficient training in practice to point the way along which the young lawyer must go in the discharge of his professional duties. Not that any school can anticipate the advantages of experience, or, by any process, so prepare its graduates that Minerva-like they can spring from the Commencement exercises full-panoplied for the conflict of the courts or the routine of the office. No one, however enthusiastically he may champion the importance of preparation for practice, would even suggest that this goal is attainable; but there is a vast difference between doing nothing and doing all one can along practical lines.

At this point an interesting controversy has arisen. Some legal educators say there is not enough time in a threeyear course to give instruction in practice and procedure, if proper attention is paid to thorough training in the science of law. They insist that the student who has properly studied the principles of law will be able to adjust