Should Applicants for Admission to the Bar Be Required to Take a Law School Course?

If the requirements for admission to the bar had been advanced in any thing like equal degree with the progress made in law schools, there would be unqualified reasons for rejoicing in the prospect. Unfortunately, however, this is far from the case, though some notable advances even in this respect have been made. It is remarkable and unfortunate that in America and in Great Britain, whose system of law is undoubtedly the most difficult of all systems in the world to master, we require no institutional or school training of the men who are to fill the important functions of lawyer, judge, legislator, and public administrator. In nearly all of the European countries such a requirement is made. The prospective lawyer must study in an approved school before he becomes eligible for his final examinations. The same conditions prevail in the United States, as to medicine but not a single state in the Union requires that the candidate for admission to the bar shall have spent a single day even in a law schooL. This is certainly most extraordinary, for private or office study is wholly inadequate as a training for the modem lawyer. The gap between such a training and that given by a good law school is immeasurable