Education for the Bar in the United States

Extract

There is no country in which it is as important that the lawyers should be well educated for their profession, as it is in the United States. Here they hold a political position. They are a recognized part of the machinery of government. All are officers of courts that have the acknowledged power of interpreting constitutions and statutes, which may be invoked as grounds of action or defence in pending litigation, and of holding statutes inconsistent with a constitution so interpreted to be void. Other nations may confer on the judiciary a similar authority in terms, but nowhere else is the exertion of such authority common and accepted by all as conclusive. In the last resort, questions of constitutional law and statutory construction will be decided in a court, manned exclusively by those who have been trained for the bar, after hearing argument from lawyers who have been educated in the same manner.

The constitution of the American Bar Association has a standing committee on “Legal education and admission to the bar.” Their reports, from time to time, have been influential in securing action which, since the foundation of the association in 1878, has served to lengthen the general term of study required for the admission to the bar, to broaden the field of study, and to transfer the general place of study from a lawyer's office to a law school.