University of Nebraska College of Law - Yearbook (Lincoln, NE)

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HA WORD ro THE Wrsnl' 65 There is no such thing as remaining stationary. You must ad- vance or you will retrograde. Get hold of some law book. Read and study. Get another. Study and read. If you cannot procure the more desirable books, become the more familiar with those you have. Be sure that when you do enter upon your pro- fessional life you will know more than you now know. WVhen you shall have entered upon that career, remember that you must make that your business. lVhether you have clients or not, you will have no time for dissipation or loafing. Adopt for your motto the proverb of Dr. Franklin: Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee. W Remember that a hundred lawyers rust out, to one who kills himself by hard labor. Start in life with the fixed purpose and intention of never under any possible circumstances deviating from the path of inflexible, unbending and unyielding integrity. If you are Worthy of the confidence of others, in any degree, you will have-you 7?'2!L6S?f have in your keeping the money, property, rights, secrets, liberty, and lives of your clients. These, all, you must preserve, protect, maintain, and defend as you would your very existence. Never go into court with a case without the most careful and painstaking study of that particular case from every possible point of view. Know the facts on both sides. Study the law to be applied from the standpoint of your adversary as much as f1'om your own. You have a chart--study it. As you value yourself, your standing in your neighborhood, town, and county, keep out of local politics. The ward heeler, the politcal shyster, the manipulator of the primaries, and the standing local delegate who has a law oflice is about as contemptiQ ble a piece of humanity as is permitted. to pollute the face of the earth. Never be found on the sidewalk or in any other public place ccarguing politicsf' Entertain opinions upon all popular subjects, but form these from your own investigation of those subjects. Express them in moderation, but never take an intel- lectual scuffle and wallow on the streets. Do the greater portion of your talking in your neat, orderly and well kept office.

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64 THE DIGEST exploration is ever widening before you. The lawyer's life can never be a life of rest. In this, above all other professions, we find no uiiowery beds of easef' Of all the learned professions, you have selected the most laborious and most exacting. The clergyman may discourse eloquently f1'om the sacred desk, but if his logic or his theories do not suit his hearers they are simply cast aside with perhaps but a passing remark. There is no one to stand beside him and combat his assertions. The physician may stand beside his patient until the last hope of life is gone, and possibly until life itself has departed, but there is no one to stand before him and say, 'tThis is your mistaken Not so with the lawyer. His very profession itself calls for-demands-am tagonism. Every position he assumes, every argument he ad- vances, every point he presents is met, resisted, and combatted, and all his mistakes and errors laid bare to the world, particularly to his client. He is assailed upon every side. His positions, if advisedly taken, are ridiculed, his arguments are denounced as sophistries, and his Nauthoritiesv are declared to ,be 'fnot in point. 7' The midnight oil, shedding its light upon his books, is his only refuge, and he is forcibly reminded of the old proverb, that c'There is no excellence without great labor? But you can succeed. You will succeed, if you but heed the admonition of the many thousands of our profession who have preceded you. Work, labor, toil, trouble and application is the lawyerls life. If you would succeed you must be lawyers. Not the case lawyer, who fritters away his time waiting for clients to bring him cases to be U looked up Mafter taking, but the close, hard, persistent stuclemf of Zegcal privzcqalas, the application of which he may be able and ready to make as soon as the case is presentedj This is what is required of the individual who would be recognized by the members of the profession as a lawyer. Let me impress upon your minds the fact that if you take the positionin life which you should take, you have no time to lose. Some of you may be compelled by adverse circumstances to re- sort, temporarily, to some other calling until debts are paid or money accumulated with which to purchase the first books in your library. If this be true you will be required to submit to it, but in so doing you should not neglect your legal studies.

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Dreparation for the Stubg of Siam BY PROFESSOR HENRY H. WILSON A question of supreme importance that should receive the care- ful consideration of every young man is the choice of the voca- tion in which he is to do his life's Work. Many circumstances will justly have influence in the decision of this question. But circumstances often unconsciously have too much influence in this respect. Too often mere chance influences are allowed to lead one into this or that business Without any deliberate choice having been made and with no consideration of onels fitness for it. While everyone's surroundings and circumstances should receive due consideration in the choice of his vocation, he should not al- low himself to clvqjzf into any vocation merely by suffering him- self to go in the direction of the least resistance. His choice may often be influenced, and sometimes even con- trolled by circumstances, yet his life's Work should be entered upon by deliberate choice and not become the unconscious result of circumstances. Next in importance to the choice of a vocation in life is the means of entering upon it With the best possible chances of ultimate suc- cess. It ought not to be necessary to say that certain natural qualifications are necessary to success in almost every vocation in life. That one has been successful in one line of Work is no assurance that he would not have failed in others. No young man should ever look forward to the practice of law Who has not in him the element of intellectual pugnacity. Litigation is still to a greatnextent trial by Wager of battle. The contest is no longer physical but intellectual. Courts and juries are human, and often find it difficult to resist the contention of a bold, persistent, aggressive, intellectual athlete pleading for the life, liberty, or property of his client. Usually the lawyer Ends the precedent for his clientis conten-