FINCH 
 LEGAL EDUGATrON. 
 
i,Ui«ritLL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 050 692 619 
 
 GInrnpU ICam Bc\^aa\ Sltbrary 
 
Trie UNIVERSITY RECORDS SERIES i. NO. 3. PART j 
 
 GORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 ADDRESS ON ! 
 
 LEGAL EDOGATION 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. FRANCIS MlIiRS FINCH 
 
 President of tjie lNe.w- York State Bar Association,, formerly Judge 
 of ^he New York GoUrt of Appeals, and 'Dean of the ; 
 
 ' ' - ' -Facultv of Law in Cornell Universitv 
 
 
 ITHACA, NEW YORK ; - 
 POBLISUED BY tHE PljiVERSlfv 
 
 March, 1901 
 
 Bl'MONTHLY ■ 
 
 ■NTERED AT- THE POST OFFICE AT ITHAOA, N. Y., AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. 
 
^15 
 
 7 
 
 '"t'x^-*^ 
 
LEGAL EDUCATION.* 
 
 Gentlemen of the State Bar Association : 
 
 I have chosen on this occasion, and in performance of the 
 annual duty imposed upon j'our president, to submit to your 
 attention some thoughts rather practical than academic, and 
 to busy myself more with the facts which surround and com- 
 pel us than with the theories which may be built upon them. 
 The objects of this Association are very clearly stated in its 
 constitution thus : " to cultivate the science of jurisprudence, 
 to promote reform in the law, to facilitate the administration 
 of justice, to elevate the standard of integrity, honor, and 
 courtesy in the legal profession, and to cherish the spirit of 
 brotherhood among the members thereof." These are all 
 high and worthy purposes ; and a study of our records will 
 show that they have constantly been kept in view, and a 
 genuine progress toward the ultimate and coveted result has 
 been made. If that progress has not gone as fast and as far 
 as one might wish and the journey's end is still in the 
 distance it is worth our while to measure the obstacles which 
 hajfe delayed us and the effort necessary for their removal ; 
 and it is one of those obstacles, which the duties of my later 
 life have forced upon my attention, to which I desire now. to 
 direct yours. 
 
 It is obvious that none of the purposes which we are or- 
 ganized to promote can be accomplished except by influences 
 operating upon the members of the Bar themselves. If jur- 
 isprudence is to be cultivated it must be by individual law- 
 yers contributing each his separate study to the general ad- 
 • vance. If the law is to be reformed it must be done mainly 
 by those who understand the mysteries of its mechanism, or 
 
 *President's Address delivered before the State Bar Association at 
 Albany on Jan. 15th, 1901. 
 
— 2 — 
 
 mischief rather than mending will result. If the administra- 
 tion of justice is to be facilitated the Bench and the Bar 
 must join in the needed changes and help each other to that 
 end. If integrity and courtesy and brotherhood are to be 
 secured to a greater extent than now exists it is through the 
 members of the profession, guiding and shaping the activities 
 of their own lives, that the improvement must come. It is 
 plain, therefore, that every influence for good which it is 
 possible for us to exert itl the direction of our declared pur- 
 poses muist operate upon the individuals constituting the Bar, 
 primarily and principally, or some degree of failure will 
 bring its disappointment. So far, therefore, as our objects 
 are unattained we must not fail to understand that it is to 
 the lawyer himself that we must appeal ; it is the lawyer 
 himself whom we mu.st educate and train to be and become 
 the man we would have him. Any efEort which does not 
 strike home to each member of the profession and operate 
 upon his head and heart, his intelligence and morality, the 
 trend and character of his daily life, is quite sure to prove 
 inefEectual. 
 
 But all experience teaches us that such an effort, extending 
 over a large body of men, and expected to operate steadily 
 though slowly through many years and upon changing and 
 mobile varieties of character, has its best chance, its most 
 hopeful opportunity, when it begins with the young mei»> at 
 the threshold of their careers and before habit or circum- 
 stance has hardened them into ways which we desire to see 
 improved. They are our source of supply. They pour in 
 annually the fresh blood of their hopes and ambitions, and 
 as the years run on they become the Bar and make it what 
 it is. I am sure, therefore, that the work of our Association 
 can best attain its declared objects by striving to make that 
 student body in head and in heart, in manners and morals, 
 in every aim and every purpose, fully abreast of the standard 
 of professional excellence which we have set before us. 
 
— 3 — 
 
 To do this prudently we must take account of current con- 
 ditions. They are widely and radically different from those 
 existing fifty years ago, when the older men among us, now 
 peacefully counting the scars of our battles, were admitted 
 to the Bar. Then there was no rule of preparation for the 
 study of law and there was no instruction save that obtained 
 in the law office. Men totally unfit registered their names 
 as clerks, and then picked up in a way both lazy and unsys- 
 tematic enough of Blackstone and Kent and enough of prac- 
 tice through the copying of papers to pass the very easy and 
 timid examination of a sudden committee drafted from a re- 
 luctant bar. The saving element, and the only one in the 
 situation, was that the clerk became more or less the assistant 
 of the master, and that, through the copying of papers, prec- 
 edents of pleading and practice, forms of conveyancing, and 
 briefs upon disputed questions of law passed under the young 
 man's eye slowly enough to be studied with the patient pro- 
 gress of his pen. He absorbed what law he knew rather 
 than studied it. It is quite true that this crude and lax 
 method of study was paralleled by that of the Inns of Court 
 in England, which were long mere scenes of revel and fes- 
 tivity and even yet do not require too much of the men upon 
 their rolls : and that in both countries very able and dis- 
 tinguished lawyers grew up whose names and reputations 
 have survived. But these were men who succeeded not be- 
 cause of the prevailing system of study, but in spite of it : 
 self-taught men who won their way by the most persistent 
 and industrious labor and who simply conquered their awk- 
 ward surroundings. I believe, too, that their fame was large- 
 ly due to the wide gap which opened between them and the 
 average practitioner whose low level of acquirement has been 
 so lifted and the gap so narrowed that the same learning and 
 capacity exhibited now has much less of the marvelous 
 about it and has ceased to excite the wonder out of which 
 fame is born. 
 
— 4 — 
 
 But the one good and useful element in the old system has 
 almost wholl3'^ disappeared. In general, under existing con- 
 ditions, the student in the law office copies nothing and sees 
 nothing. The stenographer and the type-writer have 
 monopolized what was his work. The flying symbols and 
 click of the keys have distanced the slow travel of his pen, 
 and he sits outside of the business tide ebbing and flowing 
 around him like some solitary on the sands tired of the book 
 that has grown dull. Difficulties, however, usually breed 
 remedies and the student's needs very soon evolved Law 
 Schools. They have grown up with astonishing rapidity 
 and in the main working in right directions. At first they 
 failed to fully recognize the duty and responsibility thrust 
 upon them. They became a sort of hospital for those who 
 had failed elsewhere. The collegian dismi,ssed for incapacity 
 or idleness made a harbor of the law school where he could 
 lie lazily at anchor. But this unhappy condition did not 
 last long. Most of the schools tightened the reins of dis- 
 cipline, .systematized their courses of study, te.sted theirmen 
 with rigid examinations, weeded out the idle and the vicious, 
 and tied the classes down to lines of vigorous and faithful 
 study. If there are any which have not emancipated them- 
 selves from the loose and lazy ways of the earlier time they 
 should be subjected to the influence which the massed 
 opinion of the Bar can exert, and induced to lift themselves 
 to the level of the best. For it is the truth of to-day, the 
 inevitable outcome of changed conditions and surroundings, 
 that the future of the Bar is in the hands of the Law Schools. 
 It will rise or fall in learning and ability, in the scope and 
 range of its intelligence, in the measure of its integrity and 
 the tone of its morality as the Law Schools rise or fall, for 
 they take the young men at their most impressionable age 
 and serve as the mould in which the melted gold of youth, 
 bubbling and restless, is cleared of its adulterants and shaped 
 into the cold firmness of its ultimate purpose. We must 
 
— 5 — 
 
 face that new condition. We must take the measure of the 
 new duties which it imposes ; and the Bar must watch the 
 Law Schools. 
 
 I am glad to be able to say that this Association has not 
 neglected that duty, that through its committees on legal 
 education it has done much for the advancement of the 
 schools, but, I think, also, that the general body of our pro- 
 fession have given little thought and less care to the one 
 agency which most directly affects the standing and char- 
 acter of the Bar. They have been content to entrust their 
 protection against an irruption of the unfit to the barrier 
 provided by the formation of the State Board of L,aw Exam- 
 iners. That was a wise mea,sure and the Board has done its 
 work well. It has winnowed out, better than has ever been 
 done before, the wheat from the chaff, and yet of necessity 
 much material gets through the screen that ought to have 
 been stopped at an earlier stage and in a different way, — 
 ought to have been stopped in the Law Schools themselves, — 
 will be .stopped there when the general sentiment of the Bar 
 joins in a demand for higher standards of preparation and 
 longer and more thorough courses of study. 
 
 And this brings me to some suggestions for which I alone 
 am responsible, but which I think this Association should 
 take into .serious consideration. I believe the time has come 
 when the Court of last resort to which has been entrusted the 
 formulation of rules for admission to the Bar should amend 
 those rules by requiring a complete High School course of 
 four years or its equivalent as the minimum of preliminary 
 preparation for the study of law, and a course of three years 
 in a Law School or of four years in a law office as the con- 
 dition of an examination for the Bar. These suggestions 
 involve the inquiry whether the Court will be willing to make 
 such a change and whether it ought to make it. I may be 
 permitted to say that I know a little something about that 
 Court and its staid and careful ways. I hazard nothing in 
 
— 6 — 
 
 expressing the assurance that there are no members of the 
 profession more anxious than they to see the standards of 
 legal education elevated and the material of the Bar strength- 
 ened and improved ; but tliey feel it to be their duty not to 
 legislate in advance of the public and professional sentiment 
 and to move slowly and with care along the routes of change. 
 They are conservative : they should be : but I believe it cap- 
 able of demonstration that the suggested amendment of their 
 rules will meet the cheerful approbation both of the Bar and 
 the public, and that the change in and of itself is desirable 
 and prudent. 
 
 The general trend of opinion is very manifest when we 
 recall that a majority or almost a majority of the law 
 Schools of the State, at the expense of both numbers and 
 income, have already adopted the complete High School 
 standard and the three-year course : that Columbia Univer- 
 sity has gone further by confining her I,aw School after 1903 
 to college graduates : that the Association of Law Schools of 
 the nation formed last summer at Saratoga deliberately 
 limited its membership to those which after September, 1901, 
 should require a complete High School course of study and 
 those who now do or before 1905 should maintain a three 
 years' course: that the American Bar Association, v;ith a 
 membership radiating over all the States and reflecting the 
 matured and general views of the profession, passed formal 
 resolutions in 1897 advising both changes ; that the Board of 
 Law Examiners of the State, prompted by convictions 
 born of their valuable experience, recommended both the 
 higher preparation and the longer courses ; that men of con- 
 ceded eminence both at the Bar and on the Bench, as Judge 
 Dillon in his Storrs lectures at Yale and Judge Brewer of 
 the Federal Court, in an address before us, have expressed 
 similar opinions ; and that eveu the metropolitan pre.ss, 
 brought to the subject by disgraceful conduct of one or more 
 members of the Bar, have published their conviction that ad- 
 
mission ought to be made ' ' more arduous so as to actually 
 discourage those who see in it only a cheap and easy way of 
 getting into a profitable business." Such facts should as- 
 sure the Court that in making the change it will not be 
 struggling in advance of the sentiment of the day, but will 
 simply put itself abreast of the current of popular thought 
 and yield to an almost unanimous demand. 
 
 But I should not stop here. The proposed change must 
 be examined on its merits, and the objections which have 
 been made to it be fairly weighed in the balance. At the 
 outset it is well to have before us the actual situation, 
 and see what and where defects exist to which a remedy 
 should be applied. During the year of 1900 the Board of 
 Law Examiners received 899 applications and examined 876 
 candidates for admission. Of that number 113 failed once 
 or more than once. Of the whole number only 157 came 
 with an exclusive law office education, and the failures 
 among them reached 25 per cent, while among those who 
 had received in whole or in part a Law School education the 
 failures did not exceed ten per cent. Only about 18 per 
 cent of the whole number depended upon the law office edu- 
 cation alone. These facts are instructive. They show that 
 the young men themselves realize the need of Law School 
 instruction, and only a small minority, probably under the 
 pressure of financial needs, omit its advantages. It is 
 obvious, also, that this minority, after three years of office 
 study, fail to a very serious extent to pass the Bar examinations 
 and need at least an added year of study to bring them up to 
 the proper standard of qualification. On the other hand 
 there is more of failure among the men of the schools than 
 seems explainable by the nervous anxiety of the occasion 
 on the accidents of unreflecting answers. The Examiners 
 assure us that the percentage has been steadily lessening, 
 due undoubtedly to the increasing severity of instruction, 
 and with a uniform lifting of preparation and lengthening of 
 
— 8 — 
 
 courses the failures should nearly pass away, and there should 
 come a higher level of acquirement among those who succeed. 
 
 The advantage of a Law School course of three years I 
 think may be made clear by this consideration. A course of 
 two years can only cover the technical subjects of study and 
 that more or less by a process very like cramming. The 
 classes are too large and the time too short. Much has to 
 be omitted which is very useful and beneficial, to allow of 
 what is imperatively needed. The young man is gorged and 
 has little opportunity to digest. And the things omitted un- 
 der the compulsion of the narrowing time are precisely those 
 which ought to be added to turn out something more than a 
 cheap lawyer. What some of these neglected things are, 
 often crowded out of a course of two years, I shall have oc- 
 casion later to say, and to make my protest against the neg- 
 lect. 
 
 I insist also that the shorter Law School course coupled 
 with the present .standard of previous acquirement tempts 
 the young scholar to .sacrifice thoroughness of preparation 
 to speed of arrival. He sees that by cutting off the fourth 
 and last year of the High School course and at once entering 
 on his three years of law-study he can get to the Bar in two 
 years from what should have been his High School gradua- 
 tion. He ought not to be ,so tempted. It is a wrong to him 
 and to the state. The citizens pay for his course and he has 
 only to take it. Experience and ability have planned its 
 length and its lines of study. It is due to the state which 
 gives, and the boy who receives, that he should take the gift 
 unmutilated and complete and reach, that .standard of educa- 
 tion deemed so neces.sary to the citizen of a republic resting 
 wholly on intelligence that it is furnished without fee or re- 
 ward. 
 
 I add another thought which, however, is both a thought 
 and a fact. A low standard of preparation on the part of 
 the student compels a low standard of instruction on the part 
 
— 9 — 
 
 of the instructor. The teacher must get down to the level of 
 the taught. The latter must understand or the}' will not 
 learn, and if the teaching goes over their heads and wastes it- 
 self in the air, nothing has been accomplished. It is no 
 light matter, this. It touches the capacity, the strength, the 
 vital energy of the law professor himself. You cannot force 
 him to teach day after day and year after year on the low 
 level of present acquirement without a visible and tan- 
 gible reaction on himself. He ceases to grow up, while all 
 the time compelled to grow down. Forced habitually to stoop, 
 he .soon forgets how to lift a free head into the air. Those 
 only who have tried to make plain the difficult problems of 
 which the law is full and have seen how impossible it was to 
 lift some of the insufficiently trained capacities before them 
 to the level of comprehension, can appreciate how the effort 
 shallows the current of thought, how it numbs vitality and 
 saps courage and deadens ambition, and how it tends to 
 lower and weaken the man himself. He ought to grow. 
 The boys about him should be stimulants and not opiates. 
 They should be bright and eager and questioning ; putting 
 him to his spurs and capable of demanding and appreciating 
 the best of his brain and heart, and not .some truant from a 
 High School's final year, hurrying to nail a shingle on a 
 door. And so it is for teacher as well as scholar that I urge 
 the wisdom of more thorough preparation and a longer course 
 of study. 
 
 I know the objection most commonly made that in this 
 manner we may shut out those who cannot spare the added 
 time and whose necessities compel haste and among whom will 
 be some who are in all repects deserving. Judge Brewer, 
 in an address before you, gave the complete and satis- 
 factory answer, which has been cited in a report of the Law 
 Examiners, but may well be repeated once more. He said : 
 "A perfect answer is that a great many ought to be deterred. 
 A growing multitude is crowding in who are not fit to be 
 
lO 
 
 lawyers, who disgrace the profession after they are in it, who 
 in a scramble after a livelihood are debasing the noblest of 
 professions into the meanest of avocations." Let me add 
 some pertinent facts. I have asked a friend of mine whose 
 daily occupation compels him to feed upon statistics a ques- 
 tion as to the growth of the Bar and he gives me these re- 
 sults. Taking into view the 40 years from 1850 to 1890, 
 the population of the state just about doubled, increasing 
 from a little more than three millions to a little less than six 
 millions, while in the same period the number of lawyers rose 
 from 4263 to 11,194, or 2,668 in excess of the rate of increase 
 in the population of the state. What the census of last year 
 will indicate will be known later, but I predict that it will 
 show'that while population has somewhat more than doubled 
 in forty years the numbers of the bar have trebled. In 
 1840 there was was one lawyer to every 726 of the popula- 
 tion, but in 1890 there was one to every 536. Very possibly 
 the new census may show one to every 400. For, in 1895, 
 467 applicants were admitted to the Bar ; while in 1900 there 
 were 913, so that the number ju.st about doubled in five 
 years. Do you realize what these facts mean ? They mean 
 that the profession is becoming overcrowded, that the rush is 
 an evil and a hardship both to the old and the new members, 
 that pressed by the necessities of a livelihood there is danger 
 that men may be tempted to gain money by questionable 
 means and may bring scandal and disgrace upon our pro- 
 fession. Do I state this too strongly ? Here again the 
 metropolitian press, shocked by recent events, has sounded 
 a note of warning, and said to us from outside the profession, 
 from the standpoint of good citizenship, these ominous 
 words : 
 
 " It will not be unfitting, either, to regard this as a warn- 
 ing or an admonition to our schools of law to be most con- 
 servative and circumspect in their work of adding to the 
 ranks of the profession. There is rea.son to believe that the 
 great numbers of graduates every year are overcrowding the 
 
II 
 
 profession, and that its overcrowded state and the consequent 
 difficnlty of making a competency in honorable practice are 
 conditions which conduce to corrupt practices." 
 
 If, therefore, the changes I advise, do tend to lessen the 
 number of applicants for admission to the Bar, I regard such 
 result as a benefit and not a harm. The deterrent effect of 
 those changes will keep out no young man who is fit to suc- 
 ceed and determined to succeed, but the very increased effort 
 will make him a stronger and a better man, and more worthy 
 and more likely to win in the struggle for place and for 
 reputation. We need not fear for such men. No severity 
 of preparation or length of study will scare them away. 
 They are the stuff of which good lawyers are made and will 
 not shrink from the labor or the time required. Rather they 
 will welcome it as giving room for that thorough and delib- 
 erate study which they know to be an imperative necessity. 
 I do not worry about them. They are as sure to come to us 
 as they are to live. But the change will tend to shut the 
 door on the idle, the lazy, and the unprepared. The mem- 
 bers of the medical profession have already shut that door 
 and locked it. They require a full High School course as 
 the minimum of preparation and then four years of stud}' in 
 some approved School of Medicine. They do not except or 
 prefer the college graduate. He may be, he often is, better 
 prepared, but the four years of study are essential and exact- 
 ed. Even the veterinarj' student may not doctor a horse 
 unless he has studied for two years in a competent institu- 
 tion. Is the law so much easier, so much .simpler, so much 
 less loaded with responsible duty, that a college graduate 
 may practice it after a two years' lingering in a law oESce 
 and a non-graduate in one year more ? I mean to free my- 
 self from all responsibility for the situation ; for it borders on 
 disgrace to see the profession which should outrank all the 
 rest, trailing far in the rear and tempting with its easy- 
 swinging doors a scramble of the unfit. 
 
— 12 — 
 
 The change, if it shall come, will naturally be ordered to 
 take effect far enough in the future to avoid interference with 
 those who have already filed their certificates, and the in- 
 terim will give ample time to provide for the new emergency. 
 The schools will retain their advantage over the law office 
 by the year added to the study-term. They should have 
 that advantage. The student should be induced to prefer 
 what all concede to be the better method of study. 
 
 And so I repeat that the time has come when the needed 
 and desirable change should be made ; that it is safe and 
 just and useful to make it ; that the opinion of the best au- 
 thorities among Bar and People is in its favor ; and so be- 
 lieving I hope the measure may be pressed with all the'force 
 which this Association can bring to the effort. 
 
 But changing the rules is not enough. It is much but is 
 not all. When the Court has done its duty the Law Schools 
 must do theirs. With greater capacity in their .students due to a 
 more thorough preliminary education and three years instead 
 of two in which to do their work they will be able to teach 
 more deliberately and expansively some things which they 
 now teach in a hurried and imperfect way, and some things 
 which the great majority of them do not teach at all. They 
 must be alive to this duty ; responsive to the new demands 
 which the new opportunity, if it shall come, will bring with 
 it. I have left myself only room to indicate two of the sub- 
 jects which require the added time and the more thorough 
 preparation. 
 
 I think the Schools should devote more attention to 
 practice than is commonly done. In 1898, a committee of 
 the American Bar Association, after specific inquires, made 
 of twenty Schools, declared : " It will not be unsafe to say 
 that as law classes are now taught not one .student in ten is 
 able to draw an ordinary pleading in any of the usual forms 
 of action without serious technical defects." What I have 
 already said indicates that the young men will get that 
 
— 13 — 
 
 •necessary knowledge nowhere else. They must become 
 fairly skilled in the use of the tools with which their work 
 is to be done. They must not be left with a good case and 
 a full and studious comprehension of it to fall, neverthe- 
 less, over some section sprung from the cloudy depths of an 
 Ocean of Code. I do not mean that the whole of our codes 
 of procedure should be studied, for the young men have but 
 one life to live ; but I do mean that the general outlines 
 of procedure, not likely to be seriously changed, should be 
 sifted out and put in their natural order for the student's 
 use, and he should be required to draw such pleadings and 
 papers as are incident to an ordinary litigation. Of course 
 it is very difficult, and probably impossible, to do that effect- 
 ively in a course of two years already crowded with doctrinal 
 study, but if the course be made longer the difficulty will 
 disappear and the added opportunity may well be utilized 
 for a more thorough instruction in practice. 
 
 Finally : there is one thing either not taught at all, or so 
 rarely that i^ is exceptional, which should be taught in every 
 school, and that is the science of jurisprudence involving 
 the history and development of the law. In this country 
 it is a national fault that we make lawyers but never jurists; 
 we study law as an art, but never as a science. That fault 
 ' is an outcome of our intensely practical lives, never inclined 
 to ask why, but always determined to know what. The mis- 
 take of it lies in this. Law is not a mere catalogue of arbi- 
 trary rules. If that were so to know those rules would be 
 enough. Law is a growth, and is growing yet, and will 
 continue to grow when you and I are gone. It has its roots 
 in the distant and dark past, and has pushed up out of the 
 dark, adding girth to the stalk and branches to the stem and 
 throwing an ever broadening shadow as it grew. One can- 
 not know it thoroughly and well without knowing the pro- 
 cess and phenomena of that growth, or realize the scope and 
 meaning and true force of its doctrines without knowing 
 
— 14 — 
 
 whence and why they came, and by what attrition of time 
 and circumstances they were rounded into their present shape. 
 Not as we do does the Continental lawyer study law. For 
 him there are no dry husks of doctrine ; each is the vital 
 development of a living germ. There is no single bud or 
 fruit of it but has an ancestry of thousands of years ; no top- 
 most twig that does not green with the sap drawn from the 
 dark burrows underground; no fiber torn away from it but has 
 been twisted and strained by historic wheels. For him, the 
 Roman law, that masterpiece of national growth, is no sealed 
 book to be sneered at as obsolete, and elbowed out by a cor- 
 pulent and insolent Code, but is a reservoir of doctrine 
 drawn from the watershed of a world's civilization. I would 
 not go so far as did that Committee of the American Bar 
 Association whose report, though unaccepted, was an admir- 
 able product of their research and their thought. I would 
 not say, as they did, that our whole system of study should 
 be overthrown and in its place be put the study of law as a 
 science and not merely as an art ; — but I do say that it is a 
 shame to graduate a lawyer densely and absolutely ignorant 
 of the history of his own profession ; and that it is entirely 
 possible with a better preparation and a longer course, to 
 parallel the lines of technical study with the elements of 
 jurisprudence, and the story of the law's share in the 
 progress of civilization. If there was no other single reason 
 for increasing the required preparation and lengthening 
 terms of study I should deem it an all-sufficient one that the 
 change will furnish opportunity for and open the way to a 
 study of the science of jurisprudence, and will tend to make 
 our young men, not merely technical practitioners, but 
 strong, intelligent, scholarly lawyers, and, what is equally 
 needed, strong, intelligent, and scholarly men. For these 
 boys of ours are not to be mere lawyers. They may float 
 for a while in the accustomed waters, but very soon an irre- 
 sistible undertow sweeps them out into the stormy sea and 
 
— 15 — 
 
 among the pounding waves of political life. They are to be 
 our leaders, our civic rulers, our law-makers. What law 
 will he make who is stone-blind to the law that has been 
 made ? How will he know to guide our growth who does 
 not understand the growth already attained ? Shall we leave 
 our legislator who is to be, to ignorantly propose the experi- 
 ment of laws which were tried and tested in the old years and 
 finally thrown with a swing of di.sgustinto the rag-bin of fool 
 projects? No, gentlemen of the Bar, no ! Our Law Schools 
 must give us .something more than the mere artisan who 
 can draw a pleading or trip a lying witness. Their product 
 must be men as well as lawyers, vitalized by the air of his- 
 toric jurisprudence, fascinated by the absorbing interest of 
 the study, strengthened and lifted by its world-old le.ssons. 
 I grant that it is not an easy thing to do and that the teacher 
 must first teach himself. But if one may do that in the gray 
 of his gathering winter, how much better may those do it 
 who have youth and strength for their handmaids and years 
 for their arena ! I grant again that the young men will 
 sometimes be both restless and doubtful, but if you take 
 them firmly in hand and hold them to their work, very soon, 
 if there is the making of a man in them, they will grow eager 
 and joyous in the study, and some day add wealth to its 
 domain. And so I plead with our admirable Court that the 
 schools may have the opportunity, through the requirement 
 of higher preparation and longer lines of study, to train up 
 men who will be an honor to the profession and a blessing to 
 the State. 
 
 And now J must relieve your patience. I have said what 
 I should ; I have done what I could. This effort in behalf 
 of legal education is possibly the la.st service which I can 
 render to the State in which ray life has been lived, and to 
 which I owe both allegiance and gratitude. It might have 
 been more interesting to have discussed before you some 
 problem of the law or some unsettled question of jurispru- 
 
— 16 — 
 
 dence ; but what I have said has seemed to me a duty not to 
 be postponed or neglected or in any way subordinated to the 
 mere pleasure of the occasion. No riian knows more 
 thoroughly than I do the need of speaking as I have spoken ; 
 and whatever the outcome I shall feel at least that I have 
 not been unfaithful to my chosen profession. 
 
QOttBGE OF LAW. 
 
 doR^4m.L -itfi^rsnEiRsiTY. , 
 
 JACOB GOnLD-SCJHUjLkAlJ, 'AM. , D.$c,, Lr,,D. , Pr&idedtT.- • 
 
 FRANCIS M, FUgCH, A.B., tiUti^i Director of m College, £fean of 
 ■the Faculty. "Statute of j^^taiiids. Insolvency and Bankruptcy. 
 IvCgal^^tMcs; ; jHi'stcjry and Eyolution of the: Law. ,. ,r : , 
 
 ERNEST W.HtJFPCU'r, S.S.i I«I».B. Toirtsl- Equity Jurisdfctitto/ 
 \ ^nd Trusts. - Bills, Notes and Chee^;;, ,Internationa,l I<aw;. '; 
 
 ^PIEJXHB^RT W. POllNI).^ ' Crinjinal lM and Ercjcedture. , .Evidence. 
 Constittitijonal I/a-w.^ EartnersMp. CsirporaiionS. 
 
 WliiLlA-M A. Fmc|i,:A.S;;'is«#]^^i \The taw of IPfopertf in 
 "J;lanC Law of . Pfopefty ia. Chattels Personal (iticludiug Sai|^|- 
 ;; Mortgages and ji^i^!> Suretyship aiid Guaranty. Wills. - '-' 
 
 EDWIN H. ^%^©DR.13Fif,' „I/I/.B. Contract, Agency. ; Person^. 
 '- Insujraace. CaKiers.'- Quasi-contracts. ■ 
 
 HENRY S. RECFIELD, 4.M;. Practice and Procedure. 
 
 'ifR^BERICK: D. G;Oi,Sorf^ B.t.,-I/Iv.B, -,A%sistaMin'Ji(6jeediire, 
 
 
 JlTOGB AiFRBD C. C05CE, .A.M. li/i^ttiiies' on Shipping aad Ad- 
 ;;. ; _niiralty. .■/"''-, ' ■, _ .-'' - ' -'-'-' ■ - 
 
 ^LBFIRT, H,- WAlvICER, CIv.Bi. ' Lecturer on Patent Law. 
 
 AL^3tANDER H. p.. ERASER,, hh-^.t-LiSrarian. 
 
Cornell University 
 
 DEPARTMENTS' AND COLLEGES 
 
 iS^RABUATE SEFABTBCENT 
 
 Degrees, A.M., Ph.D., etc. 
 
 ACADEMIC SEFABTHENT 
 
 Degree, A.B. 
 
 COLLEGE OF LAW 
 
 Degree, I,L.B. 
 
 IIEDICAL COLLEGE 
 
 Degree, M.D. New York City and Ithaca 
 
 NEW YORK STATE VETEBINAR"?! COLLEGE 
 
 Degree;- D.V.M. 
 
 COLLEGE QE AGBICXTLTTTBE 
 
 Degree,, B.S.A. 
 
 NEW TOKK STATE COLLEGE OF EORESTBT 
 
 Degree, B.S.F. 
 
 COLLEGE OF ABCHITECTUBE 
 
 Degree, B. Arch 
 
 COLLEGE OF CIVIL ENGXIiTEEBING 
 Degree, C.E. 
 
 SIBLEY COLLEGE OF MECEANICAL EITGINEEBIITG 
 AND MECHANIC ABTS 
 
 Degree, M.E. 
 
KF 273 Fl+9 
 
 Author Finch, Hon Miles Franci^i 
 
 Title Copy 
 
 Legal Education 
 
 
 
 Date 
 
 Borrower's Name 
 
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