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special dress-once natural, but now representing somewhat artificially the dignity which is inherent in the law. In its place, they declare for straight forward and up-to-date canvas or buckram.

In this they are merely giving expression as a body to an opinion which has. been growing with amazing rapidity among the individual members of the profession. One law publisher reports that two-thirds of the new orders received specify buckram binding. Another publisher estimates the proportion at 75 to 80 per cent. Thousands of lawyers have "changed over" from sheep to buckram on their continuing sets, reconciling themselves to the incongruity of a set bound partly in one way and partly in another because of the manifest advantage of having the more durable binding from this time on. It is common even to see sets spotted over with buckram where special odd volumes have had to be re

bound. The owners are looking forward to having the sets all rebound in time, and thus matched up. Indeed, where buckram some years ago was heterodox in a law library, it is now, as one book man punningly declared, the conservative thing.

Naturally, this situation has set the binders and the manufacturers of binders' supplies to experimenting with various grades of cloth. A very good grade of canvas is made in England; but there is nothing better than the Americanmade buckram, which is more and more used by the leading law publishers in this country. It adapts itself readily to the work of the skillful binder. Both serviceable and handsome, buckram is undoubtedly destined to be as characteristic of the law book of the twentieth century as vellum was in the fifteenth, calf in the sixteenth, or sheep in the nineteenth century.

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How Attorney Smith Became a Law Editor.

i. The Home View. TTORNEY Henry Dillingsworth Smith has accepted a position on the Editorial Staff of the West Publishing Co. and will remove from our midst to St. Paul next week. Mr. Smith is a lawyer of ability and had a promising career at the bar opening before him, but the attractions of a legal literary life were too strong to be resisted. We confidently anticipate that he will shortly be found in the front rank of the West Publishing Co.'s knights of the pencil. Success to you, Henry!

-Jackson Weekly Bugle.

II. Smith's View.

William Jones,

Attorney at Law, Jackson, Okla. Dear Bill:

You may be surprised to learn that I have changed my base of operations and am now on the editorial force of the West Publishing Co. As you know, I had a pretty good practice in Jackson for a town of its size. But one day, as I was looking through an advance sheet of the Pacific Reporter, it occurred to me that I was wasting my time and ability in sticking to the humdrum of the active practice, that I was meant for an

author, for a legal literary editor. I felt sure that a company which issued weekly nine or ten pamphlets like the Pacific must need the assistance of bright young men of my caliber, and so I wrote to them, tendering my services, telling of my superior qualifications, magnifying, perhaps, the importance of the cases I had handled, and inclosing a few briefs. which I had prepared. I also enclosed letters from our United States Senator and our Circuit Judge showing that I was eminently qualified for the position for which I was applying. Their reply stated that there was no vacancy, but added that in the selection of editors they were not guided by testimonials, but relied solely upon their own opinion of the applicant's fitness as evidenced by actual tests in writing headnotes. However, they offered to put me on their waiting list and with this I was obliged to be content. A month or two later I received a letter inviting me to compete with thirty others for a vacancy which had then occurred.

extent my ideals by conforming to what seemed to be their established methods. After this came a third installment, with a letter commenting on the improvement in my work. It seems that there were now but three of us left in the competition, and this fact put me upon my mettle. After this came a summons to St. Paul for a trial on actual work. This was a triumph but it was qualified, because I was warned not to announce to my friends the purpose of my trip, as it might not result favorably.

In

On arriving here, I found myself among a group of forty able men, graduates of the academic and law departments of Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Chicago, and other large universities, one of whom is Maldim, who was in the class ahead of us at Ann Arbor. stead of being put to work as a full-fledged editor a one hundred and thirty page book on headnote writing was put into my hands to study. It opened my eyes to many things. It contained rules for the preparation of cases and samples of original paragraphs written by new editors and the corrected paragraphs written by the revisor. I learned for the first time, that in placing catch words over the paragraphs I could not use any word which occurred to my mind but must use one of the four hundred and twelve main titles of the American Digest System; that wherever a statute was construed, language of the statute must be set forth in the syllabus, etc., etc. I spent nearly a week studying this book. After this I was set to work writing headnotes under the direction of one of their chief editors, known as the revisor. At first I had some trouble making my views meet those of this gentleman but after several weeks of hard work I reached the point where we often agreed even over the first draft of my

My first impulse was to decline to join in any such scramble for their old vacancy. On reflection, however, I concluded that I would go in and show them what real headnote writing was. So I went at the first three cases. When I sent them off I was thoroughly satisfied that their editor in chief would have no trouble in making a decision as to the best work. A few days later I received the company's reply, which I am free to confess was a blow to my self-esteem. Instead of an invitation to come to St. Paul, it contained three more cases and an invitation to try again. Criticisms of my work which were inclosed impressed upon me the fact that there were some things about headnote writing which I wasn't just up on, due, of course, to my inexperience. I then prepared this second lot of cases, sacrificing to some, headnotes. This training over, I was in

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A New Development in Legal Education.

By CHARLES M. HEPBURN, A. B., LL. B.,

Professor of Law, University of Indiana.

The Inauguration of the American Institute of Law promises a very important advance into new fields of legal education. The movement was started some months ago by the American Law Book Company. Encouraged by the success of its Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure, which is largely the work of law school teachers, the American Law Book Company has taken the initiative in moving for the establishment of a high grade institution for legal education in its widest relations, to be organized by, and conducted under, the control of law school men and active practitioners interested in the cause of legal education. Professor Charles M. Hepburn, of the Indiana University School of Law, has been asked to take charge of the organization and development of the Educational Side of the Institute. He is now engaged in this work. At the request of the American Law School Review he has furnished us with the following statement of the general purpose of the Law Institute and its proposed methods of teaching.-EDITOR.

'HE leading purpose of the Ameri

THE

can Institute of Law is to supplement the work of the Law Schools which require residence on the part of their students. The Institute would not turn any away from the residence schools or discourage entrance into them, but the contrary. It will seek to reach those whom the residence Law Schools cannot reach, or at least do not reach. It would provide a complete, systematic, and scientific course of instruction in law for all who desire to study the law of the land, but cannot find the time and the money necessary for attendance upon a good residence Law School.

haps larger than either lawyer or layman. supposes. They constitute a great neglected majority. With the best of intentions the door of legal learning has been locked against them by the Law Schools, even in universities which, in other departments of human knowledge, seek to aid those who cannot go into university residence.

The existence of this class is sometimes brought to the attention of law school faculties by the enrollment, among the freshmen law students, of an active member of the bar who, for the sake of a scientific course in legal training, has closed his law office, given over his law

The number of such persons is per- business, and moved his family to a col

lege town for the three years' residence in the shadow of the law school. He will, no doubt, profit from this courage and self-denial. He ought to have many followers. It is roughly estimated that from 50 per cent. to 70 per cent. of the practicing lawyers in the central West have come to the bar with neither law school instruction nor adequate office training; and there is abundant evidence that very many of these realize the defect and seek a remedy. But for every one who thus closes his office, and enrolls in a good residence law school, there are 50 who remain out in the woods.

No less numerous is that rapidly growing class of business men who desire to study law, either for the purpose of intellectual training, or because of specialized lines of business which require a working knowledge of fundamental distinctions in some branches of substantive law.

The neglected condition of law clerks who seek to reach the bar, but cannot attend a good residence law school, has long been recognized-by practitioners rather than by law school faculties. There appear to be some fifteen thousand of these law clerks now registered in law offices as candidates for admission to the bar. It is easy to say that all such should obtain leave of absence from their offices, enroll in good residence law schools, and give three years to the uninterrupted study of law. Perhaps the law clerk of to-day, for his own sake and for the sake of the profession which he hopes to enter, should enroll in a good residence law school. But even if this is so, and even if it be assumed that the State ought to prescribe a full law course in a residence law school as preliminary to a call to the bar, it is clear that the Legislatures will not require this for many a long year to come. It is also

very clear that a host of the law clerks will not attend the residence law schools and will force a way to the bar, whether the law schools like it or not. "As well try to sweep back the tide with a broom," said a member of one of the Boards of State Bar Examiners recently, "as try to keep the law clerks from getting to the bar."

In the prevailing conditions in America, the practical question for legal educators is not, "How can law clerks be forIced to leave their law offices and attend good residence law schools?" nor, "How can law clerks who have not attended residence law schools be kept out of the bar?" but, "What is the best legal education which can be offered to law clerks in their law offices?"

The Institute aims to reach, with appropriate educational or instructional methods, all of these wide classes of persons. It will offer in full the regular course of the best three-year law schools, with some additional subjects, as, for instance, a course on legal ethics. It will offer also a number of special courses to meet the needs of business men. The regular course will cover a period of four years. In exceptional cases, however, on a showing by the student of adequate academic training and facilities for continuous legal study, the course may be completed, and a certificate granted, after a searching examination, in three years.

The instruction will necessarily be by correspondence. While there are successful correspondence law schools in existence, the general method employed by the Institute will be somewhat different from that found in these schools, in that it is designed not only to impart information, but also to develop in the student the power of legal reasoning. It aims to give him through correspondence

a legal training like that which can be obtained in residence law schools under approved methods of instruction.

In most subjects in the regular course the work will be based upon a study of carefully arranged selections of decided cases. The full course will include instruction, first, in certain general introductory subjects, such as Elementary Law and How to Study Cases, based on the use of text-books, quizzes, and cases for practice; second, on the individual subjects generally covered in the first, second, and third year work of the best residence law schools.

The method of instruction in each of the individual courses shows the following features: a subject introductory lecture for each subject; a topical introductory lecture and hypothetical cases for each main division; a carefully arranged selection of actually decided cases, printed without the syllabi, for each topic, intended to furnish the student with the materials for working out the principles governing the topic; questions intended to direct the student's attention to special features in any one of the cases, as to the judge deciding the case, the course of the action in the case, and other points of critical or historical interest; examinations based on an extensive selection of hypothetical cases; etc. The manner of presenting the subject-matter to the student, the quizzing, the methods employed in preparing reports on cases read, the review work, the manner of conducting examinations, have all been worked out with an eye single to the educational efficiency of correspondence teaching in the fundamentals of the law.

The work of instruction will be in charge of a faculty composed of Lecturers, Professors, and Instructors.

The Lecturers, selected from the foremost authorities on their subjects in the leading law schools, will prepare the Introductory Lectures for the several courses, and co-operate with the Professors in selecting the cases on the subject.

Each professor in the Institute will have charge of a limited group of subjects, to the scientific and systematic study and teaching of which he is expected to give continuously his best thought and energies. The aim of the Institute is to have in its professors a body of lawyers, each of whom is entitled to recognition as an authority on the subjects intrusted to him and can teach as a master of these subjects and not as a retailer of secondhand opinions. It is also the aim of the Law Institute to enable each of its Professors to make a career in the work of the Institute as a teacher of law.

The work of a Professor will be to conduct the courses committed to his charge, and, in particular:

(1) To prepare the topical lectures in his subjects, as distinct from the subject introductory lectures prepared by the Lecturer.

(2) To select and arrange the cases for the subject when they are not selected by the Lecturer.

(3) To frame the quizzes in his subject and the hypothetical questions.

(4) To prepare for the assistance of the Instructors the proper statement of the cases and the answers to the Case Interrogatories.

The work of the Instructors will be to assist the Professors in the several courses, and in particular to examine, criticise, and grade the note books and the examination books of the students. It is the purpose of the Institute that every note book sent in by a student shall re

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