John Marshall Law School - Abstract Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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THE JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL With the gradual evolution of society, and the development of the complex system of law in our modern civilization, the profession of the law has broadened into various and clearly defined fields of service. Thus the law er of today may choose fields of activity that were not open to his predecessors. Court practice, while still a conspicuous part of his duty, has given way in large degree to many other kinds of service, ranging from the writing of legal papers to acting as counselor for corporations. —FREDERICK J. ALLEN, The Law as a Vocation.

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he £egal Profession and the Guening aisu School (Continued from page 14) great number of practitioners. Conseauently when circumstances make it possible for him to offer some one else a position in the teaching of law, he is much less acquainted with the vet- eran members of the profession whose reputa- tion has been earned and whose mettle has been tested on the hard field of experience, than he is with those who were his own asso- ciates as a student or those whom he has in- structed while a teacher. Since trusting a man i ath the responsibility of teaching others in- volves the placing of great confidence m the teacher so selected, this factor of personal ac- quaintance is obviously of great importance. The weakness of this development has. how- ever, been the subject of very frequent com- ment by lawyers and even by teachers of law themselves in schools built up in this man- ner. In the last ten years this feeling has re- sulted in specific efforts to endeavor to bring the student in such schools into closer contact with the ripened maturity and the rich experi- ence of the practitioner. The medium em- ployed, however, is gene rally that of the occa- sional lecturer or short series of lectures by some outstanding member of the Bar, which unfortunately puts this lecturer rather in the position of being on exhibition instead of plac- ing him in a close, companionable and informal relationship with the student. It is especially in establishing such contact between the law student and the ripened prac- titioner that the evening law school is preemi- nent. With faculties ordinarily built up among men of demonstrated ability at the Bar, the stu- dent is thus given an opportunity for acquaint- ance with him and conversational companion- ship with men who are daily doing that which he aspires to do. The student is thus permitted to learn, as it were, by absorption and personal influence, — modes of learning which are among the most effective of all not only in what they impart from a factual stand-point but likewise in atmosphere and attitudes which they pass on to the coming lawyers. The second notable benefit to the legal pro- fession from the evening school arises from the fact that the normal evening law school stu- dent is engaged in some other occupation or business and by the time he is ready to enter the law he has had at least several years of such business experience. Inasmuch as the ultimate purpose of the law is, of course, to subser -e the broad social welfare of the body politic of which, of course, the conduct of business is an integral part, the addition to the legal profession of men experienced in business ser -es naturally to make them more effective as lawy ers than they would otherwise be. The lawyer who enters the profession with no background other than that of many years spent in schools, and no experience in life outside of the academic and home environments almost of necessity has a doctrinaire and abstract conception both of the situations with which the law must deal, in- cluding both persons and things, and of the general position of the law in a balanced scheme of social organization. In an effort to remedy this acknowledged de- ficiency a number of great university law schools of the country such as Yale, Chi- cago, Harvard, Columbia, Minnesota and others have lately required every law student to pur- sue studies in the fields of social science and business administration as well as law. The necessity for such additional instructions is, of course, much less in the case of the evening law school student who as a rule has had not only these somewhat auxiliary or preliminary studies to a substantial degree but in addition has ex- perienced the thing about which he studied. It would inevitably be a misfortune if the le- gal profession was to be recruited solely from any one type of student brought up on only one kind of training. To obtain that balance in the profession which is the ideal it is desirable that it should have practitioners trained by every feasible mode of training and representing dif- ferent viewpoints of the law. Through the re- sultant interchange the law and the legal pro- fession are enriched both intellectually and practically and the lav yer can be more useful to society. The outstanding contnbutions then of the evening law schools to this interchange that is essential to the realization of the fullest use- fulness of the profession to society are first, the training of future law.yers by men of ripened experience in practice and second, the addition to the membership of the profession of men whose varied background and prior business expenence will enrich the profession by offset- ting the tendency toward hair-splitting verbal quibbHng and over-rationalization which in- evitably arises when fresh blood and flesh are not constantly introduced into the life stream of any profession. Page Seventy-one

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THE ABSTRACT— 1937 ACTIVITIES