cannot afford to buy many law books, procure a lot of Patent Office reports, agricultural books, etc. Any kind will do, so they are books and wil make a showing. Congressional documents are a good kind of literature to fill in space with, and your member of Congress will gladly furnish you with a cart load of them, particularly if his name is in them. Always have your table and desk full of court papers, spread out like war maps. When you are retained in a case, either procure the original papers or copies of them, and keep them in your office, opened to their fullest extent, ¡ying on chairs or the floor, so arranged that persons coming in can see them. It makes them think you are doing a large business. If you have no cases in court, go to the clerk's office and borrow a lot of files and papers in cases disposed of, and scatter them around your office promiscuously; no one will read them, and it makes it look like business. It has the same effect on the observer that new dry goods boxes have in front of a store. When a merchant desires to advertise new goods, he hustles around, rolls several new boxes on to the sidewalk, and the deed is done, the goods have arrived. When you do business, be sure to let every one know about it. If you have prepared a paper and must file it at the court house, do not fold it and place it in your pocket, or in your hat, where no one can see it. On the contrary, open it out wide; catch it by the corner, and holding it at arm's length before you, rush wildly to the court house, run against every man you meet, bump every woman you pass, and stumble over every child in your path; that gives you a chance to stop, apologize, and explain that you are a lawyer and in a great hurry, etc., etc. Nearly all lawyers do this. Of course there are a few very modest men, and one or two very great men, who do not resort to any of these little tricks to attract the attention of the public. But the mass of the profession spend more time trying to catch the eye of the public, than they do over their books or cases, and the custom has become pretty much as stated above. Never be seen on the street, without legal papers in your hands, in your pockets, in your hat or under your arm. You should bristle with papers as a war vessel does with cannon. If you have no papers to file, catch up a piece of biank paper and run on to the street with it. No one will notice the difference. amounts to the same thing; it attracts attention, and that is all you need care about. It When you address the jury, either look cross as though you were mad at them and wanted to eat them, or smile and smirk on them as though you wanted to swallow them. If you are defending a man charged with a criminal offense, bring in all his female relations, especially his wife and babies. Seat them around the accused in such order that at the proper moment (of which you have duly posted them) they can all embrace him, and weep over him. Make them cry frequently, and at stated intervals. have them groan. Tears, sighs and groans from a criminal's friends, combined with flattery and tact from the lawyer, often clears men guilty of the most heinous crimes. If the prisoner has no wife or babies, or female relations, bring in your own-as the, average jury will not know the difference and the court and other lawyers will not give you away. Some lawyers make it a rule to never give an opinion or "talk law," out of their offices; which is a grave mistake. You should not only give an opinion. whenever and wherever asked, but you should talk so loud that all passers-by would be attracted, and would stop to listen to you as they would to any other street fakir. When a client comes to your office and asks an opinion on a matter, do not give it at once, not even though you are very familiar with the law involved. On the contrary, look over your books; the more books the better; contract your eyebrows; look wise; then, after mature deliberation and deep reflection, give him an elaborate answer and charge him accordingly. He will pay it willingly, and go away happy; while, if you had answered him quickly, he would have grumbled at any charge, no matter how small it might have been; and if you had charged him nothing, he would have gone away and consulted another attorney. You should wear collars. If standing collars, wear them so high that when you see a creditor approaching, you can draw down you head by telescoping your neck, and thus escape his notice. Or if turndown collars, wear them so large that you can raise your shoulders and slip your head behind your shirt front, and thus avoid him. Do not change your linen too often, as it makes your laundry bill run up, and then you might be considered a dude, and that is "so horrid, don't you know?" "Cleanliness is next to godliness," and if you can not be godly, for God's sake be cleanly. Some people think to be clean personally, physically, and mentally, is effeminate; therefore rather than be considered like a woman, they go dirty-unclean linen, dirty body, and filthy conversation. In the beginning of the Christian era, they were called lepers; now they are called anarchists. When you see a client going to or coming away from another lawyer's of ness. fice, it is a duty you owe to yourself and the public to call him aside into an alley or hallway, and inquire as to his busiDo not hesitate to tell him you can attend to his legal matters equally as well, and much cheaper than the attorney he has selected. While the other lawyer will be as "mad as a hatter" at what he will call your officiousness, the client will feel grateful to you, as lawyers always charge too much, and you owe it to society at large to beat down fees and bring the services of the legal fraternity within the reach of the most impoverished. Make it a point to abuse every other member of the bar at every opportunity. Do more, make opportunities. Being one of them, you know all their vulnerable points, and can make friends with litigants by talking about the weaknesses of brother advocates. Of course you have no weak points. Follow to the letter the rules laid down in this code, and you are all right. You are the one altogether lovely, and the one in whom there is neither guile nor gall. By doing this you may lose the good opinion and friendship of other lawyers, but you make the fee and secure the clients, and your conscience is clear. You have done your duty. If you have sinned, it is not a sin of omission. To be successful at it you must cultivate nerve, immobility of countenance, dissimulation, deceit, quickness of eye and hand, good temper, affability, apparent generosity; in fact, all the graces and accomplishments of a gentleman, and the cunning and tenacity of the devil. You must learn to avoid any physical demonstration or symptom, by which a close observer could form any opinion as to the operation of your mind. You must not manifest any feelings of joy or sorrow. While your mind and body are performing all the functions for which they were created, you must so control the action of your eyes that they see everything going on about you, but the other persons present must be led to think otherwise. The action of your hands must be so dextrous that while they do your bidding, your next neighbor can notice nothing unusual. The movement of your heart must be so regulated that, no matter what transpires, you neither turn pale, nor flush. While you are in fact all attention and animation, and on the alert to catch any and all movements, utterances, even looks; of all others, you must seem to be stone, wood, heartless, bloodless, anything but what you are. You must stifle conscience and bring your mind and cool judgment down squarely to the business in hand. From a practical knowledge of the professional work of the young lawyers in this state who are graduates of our modern law schools, I am fully convinced that at least a part of the course of study in a law school should be devoted to the art of brief-making. As a rule the graduate of a law school does not make as logical and comprehensive a brief as one who enters the profession well equipped from a good, first-class lawyer's office. This I believe to be because many of the schools provide for no course of instruction on that subject. JOHN B. BARNES, Teaching Legal Ethics in Law Schools. A I THE meeting of the American Bar Association held in Seattle, Wash., in August, 1908, the Association adopted the report of the Committee on the Code of Professional Ethics. This report included a special recommendation to the effect that the subject of Professional Deportment and Legal Ethics be taught in all the law schools in America. Many law schools promptly responded to the recommendation of the American Bar Association by adding to their regular class room instruction a required course of study on Legal Ethics. Other schools met the request of the Association by inaugurating a course of lectures on Legal Ethics, usually delivered by some prominent judge or member of the profession. A great many law schools, however, failed to respond to the appeal of the Association, and have not as yet placed Legal Ethics among the subjects required or offered in their course of instruction. The 1909-10 catalogues of all the law schools in the country show thirtytwo schools where Legal Ethics is being taught as a part of the regular course. These schools are as follows: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Cal. The George Washington University Law School, Washington, D. C. John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Ill. University of Florida Law School, Gainesville, Fla. Northwestern University Law School, Chicago, Ill. University of Notre Dame Law School, Notre Dame, Ind. University of Kansas Law School, Lawrence, Kan. Kansas City Law School, Kansas City, Mo. Baltimore University School of Law, Baltimore, Md. Baltimore Law School, Baltimore, Md. Suffolk School of Law, Boston, Mass. University of Mississippi Law School, Oxford, Miss. City College of Law and Finance, St. Louis, Mo. Creighton University Law School, Omaha, Neb. Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn, N. Y. Syracuse University Law School, Syracuse, N. Y. Wake Forest College of Law, Wake Forest, N. C. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C. Cleveland Law School, Cleveland, Ohio. Toledo Law School, Toledo, Ohio. Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, Ohio. Northern University Law School, Ada, Ohio. Temple University School of Law, Philadelphia, Pa. According to the announcements made in the latest catalogues of the law schools, lectures on Legal Ethics are delivered in twenty-eight schools. These schools are as follows: University of Arkansas Law School, Little Rock, Ark. Illinois Law School, Chicago, Ill. Chicago Law School, Chicago, Ill. Chicago-Kent College of Law, Chicago, Ill. Lincoln College of Law, Chicago, Ill. University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, Ill. Illinois Wesleyan University Law School, Bloomington, Ill. Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington, Ind. Tri-State College of Law, Angola, Ind. University of Valparaiso Law School, Valparaiso, Ind. Detroit College of Law, Detroit, Mich. University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, Mich. Fordham University Law School, New York City, N. Y. There are some sixty law schools where no instruction of any kind is given on the subject of Legal Ethics and Professional Deportment. I am satisfied that the cause of legal education would be greatly advanced by some special training with respect to the making of briefs. Education in this line would lead the young men, upon being retained in any matter which requires investigation and examination of authorities, to begin making a study of the principles involved, and along with it a brief in support of the propositions which they feel that they must maintain at the outset. The effort should be to learn what the law is. This, of course, involves the intelligent investigation of authorities, and a study as to the real, rather than merely the apparent, force and scope of legal decisions. It would be well, in my judgment, to have instruction in this field given in every law school. WILLIAM T. SPEAR, Supreme Court of Ohio. |