Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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prescribe a course of study, examine and confer with students, deliver to them at least two lectures a week, and generally act the part of tutor to them. 4. That there shall be a tuition charge of 35100 a year, which His the average price of education in the country. 6. That the degree of Bachelor of Laws be conferred on students who have at- tended at least eighteen months at the school and 'cpassed the residue of their novitiate in the office of some counsellorn of the highest court, or shall have remained three years in the school. 7. That the law students shall be admitted to use the college library and that 'ia complete law libraryi' be uobtained as soon as may be. 8. That the law students be permitted to board in the commons on the same terms as undergraduates and that lodging rooms shall be provided for them at a reasonable compensation. 9. That the law students have the privilege of attending the public lectures of the University free of expense. As things were in 1817, this was an exceptionally enlightened and forward looking program. To unite the two types of training, by University lectures and by reading under the guidance of a practitioner, in one institution as part of a University, was a great step forward, and before the century was over had resulted in a charac- teristically American type of legal education. When Chief Justice Parker drew up his project the task of legal education was relatively simple. The chief work of the lawyer was in the trial of causes in the courts. It was enough for the lawyer to know the local procedure and be able to move juries. There was little require- ment of anything which a law school could do better than a law ollice. But Chief Justice Parker in his project for the lectures as Royall Professor had shown the year before that he was conscious that more w'as to be demanded of the lawyer in a land where the polity was so thoroughly legal. It was not till Judge Story came to the school as Dane Professor in 1829 that the ideas in Chief Justice Parker's project began to bear fruit. But in the twelve years of the Stearns's regime a real advance had been made over the Litchheld type of school. As has been said, the latter was an expanded law oflice. Students read such books as were at hand and copied pleadings and conveyances as apprentices did in the office of a practitioner. The only advance over the ordinary office was that in the place of occasional conferences between preceptor and student the teachers dictated lectures, since the era of the great American text writers was not to come for a generation. Stearns added moots after the manner of the lnns of Court, and there were also the lectures of the Royall Professor. In its possibilities, the school set up in 1817 pursuant to Chief Justice Parker's project was much more, and it became much more. Combining the apprentice type of professional training, which obtained in England, with the Continental idea of academic law teaching, it was the first University law' school in the common-law world. For a common-law judge to work out a plan departing so completely from the English practice argues an exceptionally open mind and vision of what in the development of the country was to be the need of the profession. ROSCOE POUND i241

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