Undoubtedly there is one thing more, and that is the greatest of all; I mean, professional integrity. Now and then a trick or strategem may succeed; but in the end chicanery always ruins him who practices it. Be as acute and discriminating as you please; but, by all means, avoid artifice. It never yet raised a man to honorable distinction. A cunning lawyer, if not a knave, is very likely to be mistaken for one; whereas uncompromising probity is sure to win confidence in every quarter. You will find it as true in your practice as in geometry that the straight line is always the shortest distance between two points. So long as the litigious spirit exists among mankind, and human affairs are uncertain, the principle which requires a division of labor in all other cases will require it also in this; and we may safely conclude that a distinct class of men will always be required to conduct the litigation of their fellowmen. But let us remember that in becoming attorneys we do not cease to be moral agents; that in pledging ourselves. to our clients we do not also pledge to them our consciences; and, therefore, that no principle can justify us in doing for them what we should blush to think of doing for ourselves. It is a rascally maxim that everything is fair in litigation. The greatest fee ever offered is no justification for attempting to gain a cause by dishonest means; and I reach the result that, if there were no such thing as religious and moral obligation, it would still be true that the strictest honesty is the lawyer's wisest policy. So, then, go forward with the unwavering purpose that, come what may, you will hold fast to your integrity. Let this unbending integrity co-operate with a daily increasing knowledge of the law and a faithful attention to the business committed to you, and your success is as certain as anything future can be. Meeting of the Educational Council of the American Institute of Law sity of Minnesota; Dean Walz, of the University of Maine College of Law; Charles M. Hepburn, Dean of the American Institute of Law; William Mack, of the law faculty of the Institute; William Lawrence Clark, of the law faculty of the Institute; and Archibald C. Boyd, professor of law in Boston University, who acted as secretary. Three sessions of the Council were held. The first was given to an individual examination by the different members of the Council of the Institute's methods of teaching, as seen in the student papers in its offices of instruction. The Council considered in detail the various courses of study now running in the Institute, its method of teaching, especially with reference to the courses designed for members of the Bar and law clerks, and the question of an educational requirement for admission to the Professional Course. The principal features of the second session were the semiannual report of the Dean, covering various aspects of the work of the Institute, and the full discussion following it. The report and the discussion are too long for reproduction here, but they are in course of publication by the Institute. An extract from the Dean's report is given below: "Our work since the Detroit meeting has brought into clearer light than before the true mission of the Institute. When I undertook the development of the educational side of the Institute, I did so with the belief that there is a great and important field for legal education outside the range of the residence law schools. The law school professor, who has come to his professor's chair from his seat as a student in a law lecture room, with little or no experience at the bar, sometimes finds it hard to believe that there is a worthy demand for systematic legal education outside his lecture room-within the law offices. One legal educator, the dean of a three-year law school, has assured me that my faith is vain. The practitioner,' says he, 'is too lazy to follow a good systematic course of legal instruction, even if you offer it to him.' Another legal educator has assured me that the present generation of lawyers ought to be regarded by legal educators as a negligible quantity. 'Look to the future generation of lawyers,' says he, 'and let the present generation go its way.' These positions are, in my judgment, absolutely wrong. That the lawyer in his office rarely pursues a systematic course of legal study is no doubt true. But the reason for it is, not that the lawyer is lazy, but that no such course suited for office study has been presented to him. A practicing lawyer once said to me, before the founding of this Institute, that he had tried in every way to find a systematic method of law study which he could pursue in his office, but that he had found no method that would help him. 'I would,' said he, 'have asked some other member of the bar to act as my instructor; but in the small county seat in which I practiced this was evidently impossible. I might any day meet my instructor on the other side of a case, and all the bar would know of our relation as pupil and teachI was isolated as a law student as soon as I hung up my shingle as a practicing lawyer.' And this lawyer is one of a multitude. Give to the lawyer an opportunity to study law systematically in his office, and he will be eager to avail himself of it. er. "Nor can I bring myself to believe that the present generation of American lawyers should be neglected. The lawyer who is to be should, of course, be carefully trained for his duties at the bar; but why should the multitude of practitioners, who need and desire an opportunity for systematic legal education in the offices, be refused it, if any good way can be found to give it to them? My belief is that if the Institute can, as I am sure that it can, develop within the course of the next few years a class of even five thousand lawyers studying law systematically in their offices, the Institute will accomplish a work which will be no less beneficial than the work of the residence law schools, in raising the standard of the bar. "Without going into the matter fully, I wish to read to you a portion of a letter which I received within the last week from a member of one of the leading law firms in Los Angeles. It illustrates in a typical way the difficulties which a would-be student lawyer has to encounter in a modern law office in a city: "I believe there are a good many lawyers in the same class as myself, with regard to professional education, to whom your Institute might be of great service. ber of resolutions were unanimously adopted as follows: "The Educational Council of the American Institute of Law having assembled in New York on the 25th and 26th of February, 1910, and having visited the temporary offices of the Institute in the Lincoln Trust Company Building, in Jersey City, and there inspected the publications of the Faculty of the Institute and the papers sent in by the students, showing the progress of the work of the Institute for the past half year, and having conferred with the Dean and the instructors in regard to the books and papers and the methods of sending and receiving and revising and correcting the student papers, and having also heard the semiannual report by the Dean of the work done in that period and the plans for the conduct of the work in the immediate future, after due consideration, do "My preparation for law work consisted in reading a dozen or so of textbooks, and our state codes, under some direction from a busy lawyer. It was in many respects inadequate, not properly balanced, and almost devoid of anything in the nature of correlation of subjects and comprehensive, or philosophic, consideration of the law as a whole. I was too young and untrained to appreciate the necessity of such a study of the subject at the time. The demands of prac- hereby resolve: tice (consisting chiefly of "briefing" work, so called), as well as further education along other lines of knowledge, have accentuated the defects of my technical training. Of course, these defects. have, in some measure, been supplied by the work itself, and by more or less desultory reading and study outside of that work, but by no means satisfactorily.' "And it is to be remembered that the difficulty thus described in this letter is that which meets the ambitious young lawyer in a large city office under all the stimulating effects of city practice. How much more difficult is the position of the young lawyer in a country town, where there is little to stimulate to systematic intellectual effort?" On February 26th the Council went into executive session with reference to all questions which had been brought before it in the previous two sessions. A num "1. That we, as the Educational Council of The American Institute of Law, fully approve the report of the Dean, C. M. Hepburn, as read at our meeting in New York City on February 25, 1910, and recommend its publication. "2. That we especially approve the course of study and the method of teaching exhibited in the publications of the Faculty and the papers of the students as showing an appreciation of the best. ideals of the profession in legal education and thorough work on the part of the Faculty and the students, highly gratifying to the Council. "3. That we also especially approve the care which has evidently been taken by the instructors who have immediate charge of the examination and correction of the papers sent in by the students, as shown in the full and explicit corrections. and the pointed criticisms and suggestions which appear upon the student pa pers that have passed through the hands of the instructors. We believe that with such care and methods of teaching the conscientious student cannot fail to obtain, through the Institute method of teaching law, an accurate, well-rounded knowledge of the law, and a most valuable discipline in legal thinking. "4. That the courses on Elementary Law and on Case Study and Criminal Law as far as published show a commendable appreciation of the best ideals. of the profession and the use of approved modern methods of teaching, admirably fitted to impart an accurate knowledge of the law and develop proper habits of legal thought. "5. That the members of the Council, as a mark of their commendation of the aims and methods of the Institute and of the work of the Resident Faculty, express a desire to assist the Institute in carrying on the work as it has been outlined in the report of the Dean and exemplified in the work of the Institute, and do hereby express their willingness at all times to co-operate with the members of the Faculty, by way of advice and counsel or suggestion, in making the publications of the Institute and its course and method of teaching as nearly perfect as possible for the needs of the students and the cause of legal education." IN "The Honor System" N THE February, 1910, number of the American Law School Review students in law schools were invited to respond to the following question: "Would the 'Honor System' in connection with conducting examinations prove successful in your school, or, if it is now in effect, is it a success?" Replies were received from 493 students, representing 69 law schools. 451 students answered the question in the affirmative, while 42 students gave negative replies. The 42 students answering in the negative represented 15 law schools, although, with the exception of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the University of Illinois Law School, and the University of California Law School, affirmative replies were also received. "The Honor System" in conducting examinations is in vogue in the Univerversity of Virginia, the Washington and Lee University, the Cincinnati Law School, Stanford University, and in the National University Law School. The students in all of these schools are strongly in favor of the plan. Forty-eight affirmative replies were received from students in the Cornell University Law School, while no student in that school answered the question in the negative. The vote showed the students in the John Marshall Law School, the Denver Law School, the Mercer University Law School, the University of Maryland Law School, the University of Mississippi Law School, the St. Louis University Institute of Law, George Washington University, and the Pittsburg Law School to be favorable to the system; many affirmative and no negative replies being received from these schools. About an equal number of affirmative and negative replies were received from the Yale Law School, the University of Georgia, Chicago-Kent Law School, the University of Kansas, Harvard University Law School, Columbia University Law School, New York University Law School, and the University of West Virginia. In addition to the above vote, a number of communications from students commenting of the question were received. Some of these communications we give below. From the University of Minnesota Law School The Christmas vacation was over. Cynic had returned to dally but a few short months in the shade of Lex et Equitas; to doze blandly through a few more erudite and sonorous lectures by eminent jurists; to linger yet a little while in the hectic social whirl of college life; and then, armed with an ornate cum laude, the hand clasp and good wishes of the Dean, to issue forth to startle the corrupt and stupid world beyond the campus gates. He had just lowered himself carefully into one of the instruments of torture, ofttimes waggishly called chairs, which Occur at regular intervals in the law building, and was preparing to think deeply on various profound legal topics, when he became conscious of a hand which intruded itself among the stalks of his parted pompadour and sadly muddled the arrangement thereof. Glancing upward, he noticed the Freshman hovering over him, the light of mischief in his eyes. "Soho, my pet atrocity," said the Cynic, "you are about to disgrace the campus for another half year. Well, I suppose you have been pampered and petted and pestered with foolish questions by friends and relatives. You have undoubtedly sauntered, swaggered, and strutted about your native burg, buying, with a patronizing air, drinks for the boys, candy for the girls, and generally making a three-ply idiot of yourself aft er the manner of most freshmen on their first vacation home." "Say, put the kibosh on all that silly drivel," said the Freshman testily. "I'm in a blue funk about these exams. What do you think about all this honor system noise?" "I consider the system admirable in the extreme. After a careful study of the conditions under which it must oper ate, I can raise but one objection." "What is that?" "It won't work," answered the Cynic impressively. "An honor system, to be effective, must rest upon a broad, firm foundation of honor. That you must concede. Furthermore, in that fateful hour when the awful ordeal is upon you, when the fiery breath of the demon causes your frame to shrink and your soul to shrivel, when the knowledge which you have not gained mocks and jeers at you from afar, and carking care rests heavily upon your tender brow; in short, when you are in the clutches of the inquisition, careful observation will show that even under the present system students with a full-blown sense of honor are as scarce as unbroken New Year's resolutions. Ergo, this plan, agitated by a few hundred quixotic co-eds, would result in a mere farce; a device to prevent the semesterly egress of flunkers. "You may possibly think that I am indulging in a wild orgy of the imagination; the product of a brilliant mind rendered flighty by overstudy, but I as |