Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1916

Abstract

This is a question which is being asked with frequency and painful anxiety all over the country by young men expecting to go to the bar and by many who have only recently been admitted. To the veterna practitioner at the bar it may seem presumptuous that devoting his entire time and energy to law school work should undertake any sort of answer to the question thus propounded. Nevertheless, I venture to say the opportunities for studying and estimating the conditions and factors which must be taken into account in reaching and answer are in some respects quite good for the observer in a law school as for anyone else. Tendencies finding their roots in underlying conditions and the state of litigation and other law businesses in the mass, rather than the condition of business in a particular office or city or state, will determine prospects for the new generation of lawyers. These underlying conditions, these tendencies, the mass and character of litigated business throughout the country, and to a large extent the volume and king of non-litigated legal business, may be studied and analyzed by the observer in a law school about as well as by anyone else. Furthermore, the law-school man's visits to many parts of the country to attend bar association meetings, and for other purposes, enables him to get the testimony of lawyers in the thick of the fray in different localities. Moreover, in a school with a national constituency the law teacher is in contact with hundreds of young men from all parts of the country - young men who naturall are interested in and reflect conditions in the localities from which they come, and who are particularly eager to inquire about conditions at the local bars. Finally, the inquiries which come to administrative officers of a law school from lawyers desiring to employ young graduates and the inquiries which such officiers naturally make on behalf of the men in their classes throw more light of the same general character upon this problem.

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