Page:North Dakota Law Review Vol. 1 No. 8 (1924).pdf/1



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Much has been said of recent years about “the technicalities of the law” and “the law’s delays.” The phrases have been repeated so often that it has been taken for granted that law, as a science, is retrogressing rather than progressing. Along with this criticism necessarily goes a veiled but none the less positive condemnation of the legal prrofession. In the June issue of that dignified periodical, The World’s Work, we find an editorial indicting the legal profession and holding it responsible for what the Editor terms an intolerable condition in the administration of the law. He predicts that unless the lawyers through their Bar Associations reform the procedural rules of law, the public will take the matter in hand and do the reforming itself and though such reform will be rough and uncouth, it will be better than no reform. This editorial, which no doubt reflects the attitude of a large number of people toward our profession, is a severe criticism of the lawyer as a class. The public are looking, and have for years looked, to the lawyer to keep the administration of justice abreast of the times to meet the great changes that have occurred in all classes of society. It is said that the legal profession has not kept faith with the public and met this responsibility with which it has been entrusted.

In a measure, this is true, but to say that there has been no progress in the administration of justice is to close one’s eyes to the fact that in recent years the percentage of cases decided on question of practice and procedure, which are the cause of “technicalities” and “delays,” has become relatively small. Both the lawyer and the judge now direct their