APPENDIX I

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON LEGAL EDUCATION

To the New Jersey State Bar Association:

Your Committee on Legal Education beg leave to report that they have held a meeting of the Committee at the office of the Chairman and have discussed rather fully in committee the general subject of legal education as a qualification for admission to our bar, with special reference to certain details, more particularly discussed below. The Committee has had benefit of the attendance and views of the three members of the State Board of Bar Examiners, whose opinions on the subject are naturally of great value, and whose practical experience enables them to state facts that are particularly pertinent to the present subject. The views herein expressed may be said, generally, to be those of all the members of the Committee who attended, and of the Board of Bar Examiners, although it is not intended hereby to intimate a complete agreement on all details.

The subject nturally falls under two principal heads: General Education as the foundation for the study of law, and Legal Education as the study of a particular specialty. This latter may also be subdivided into three parts:

(a) Knowledge of substantive law;

(b) Knowledge and experience in what is ordinarily called practice and procedure;

(c) Training rather than simply knowledge in the ethical branch of a noble and honorable profession.

The subject of legal ethics may be, of course, treated as a complete topic by itself, but seems to fall, in part, at least, under the above classification.

I. General Education. There has been a distinct advance in this matter during the period of our State history, although,

as will be seen, a further advance is deemed rather necessary. Under the oldest rules conveniently accessible, which will be found at the beginning of Coxe's Reports, there was no requirement of general education laid down as a condition precedent for admission to the bar; the requirements were that the candidate should be twenty-one years of age, certified as of good moral character, and that he should have studied law for the prescribed period and have passed the examination for admission to the bar. It is well to note here that as early as 1805 the degree of Bachelor of Arts at a college or university entitled the candidate to a handicap of one year over the non-graduate; and also that the periods of study were five years for non-graduates and four for graduates. The first requirement of general education laid down in any rule of court seems to have been in 1899 (Corbin's Rules of 1906, page 54) and is substantially the same as at present. That rule required that at least three years before taking the bar examination, the candidate, if he had not graduated or passed for graduation at a college or university, should have at least reached a corresponding stage at a high school or an accredited private school, or had passed what may be called the Regent's examination in general education which was intended to be assimilated to the graduation examinations at institutions of the character named. At the same time, the term of legal study which, by the year 1838, had been reduced to four years for non-graduates of colleges and three years for graduates (Elmer's Digest, page 691), was made three years for all classes, thus placing the high school graduate or the graduate of such a school, for example, as Phillips-Exeter Academy or Lawrenceville or the Hill School in Pennsylvania or the Newark Academy, and the successful candidate at the Regents' examinations held under the auspices of the State Board of Education, all on the same plane with respect to term of legal study. Such is the present situation. The Board of Bar Examiners, in the performance of their duty, have formulated a somewhat elaborate code of rules of their own relating to the time, place and manner of holding these examinations on general education, the particular subjects on which candidates are to be examined, and the value given

to each, and so on.

These examinations have, without doubt, been conscientiously and carefully conducted. The Committee are not informed as to what proportion of the candidates presenting themselves are rejected at these examinations, and information on this point would, no doubt, be of interest. We are inclined to think, however, that the State Board has been fairly rigid in insisting upon a full and fair compliance with these rules. The case of In Re Application of K, 88 New Jersey Law, 157, is an illustration of an unsuccessful attempt to get by the State Board of Education in the matter of examinations on general knowledge and the State Board of Bar Examiners with respect to the time at which the qualification of general knowledge should have been complete.

The principal defects in the present plan as they appear to the Committee are, first, that the Regents' examinations fail to reveal a somewhat deplorable lack of familiarity with fundamental subjects of general education which may be called the three R's, so that this defect is not discovered until the candidate takes his bar examinations, and has then reacehed a stage where, notwithstanding this defect, he must be recommended for a license as having the Regent's certificate; and, secondly, that the undoubted advantages of a university training requiring normally four years time after leaving a high school or first-class preparatory school are, to some extent, thrown away by giving the candidate without a university training opportunities for admission to the bar if he can pass the examinations.

With respect to the first difficulty, it is simply symptomatic of a condition which is quite generally conceded to permeate the whole system of modern public education in this country. Naturally, the bar association cannot very well undertake to reform a general educational system, but, at least, it can call attention to apparently obvious defects in that system from its own standpoint and endeavor to secure some action by those who have the power to make a reformation. We understand it to be a matter of common knowledge that the general tendency of the common school and the high school is to ignore or slur over the fundamentals for the purpose of pushing the pupil on to specialties-besides

yielding to such fads as vertical hand-writing and the avoidance of work that requires memorizing, on the theory that it is the reasoning power alone that should be developed and not that of memory, resulting in the fashionable theory of teaching children to read without teaching them to spell, which has done almost irreparable damage in the schools. These shortcomings show themselves in examination papers in the form of illegible writing, faulty spelling and defective grammar which would bar the candidate at a Regents' examination, if thorough examinations were had in those subjects. We have the testimony of the bar examiners that a considerable proportion of the candidates would be rejected on general knowledge, if the examiners had power to take that subject into consideration, just because of defects of grammar, spelling, punctuation and chirography.

To remedy this situation one of two courses, or both, should be resorted to: First, that a thorough test in these fundamentals should be held at the Regents' examinations; and, secondly, that the bar examiners should be entitled to reject any and all papers that show upon their face a lack of sufficient familiarity with the essentials of the English language. This latter power seems to be necessary in order to cover the very large proportion of candidates who have graduated from high schools or preparatory schools, not to say colleges.

The Committee are also inclined to think that the obvious unfairness of admitting a high school graduate or the successful competitor at a Regents' examination to the bar examinations on equal terms with a college graduate would be, in part, remedied by increasing the Regents' examination requirements so as to include subjects equivalent to two years in an accredited college or university.

The

One other recommendation is made on this subject. present practice of the Regents seems to be to permit examinations in a part only of the required subjects from time to time so that the candidate may at his option take an examination in one or two subjects, go away and come back later and take another examination in some more subjects, and so on, until he has secured the necessary number of points under the rules to