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In the great schools of law in Germany attendance on lectures is not generally compulsory, and although the course is most comprehensive, familiarity with a few selected subjects appears to be all that is necessary for graduation; while in Italy, as we are informed, the law students reach graduation only "after due attendance with diligenza at lectures on a great variety of subjects." The curriculum of an American law school is not as comprehensive as in either the German or Italian universities, but the American law school adopts the Italian idea that attendance on the lectures should be compulsory. In the Michigan Law School a student who neglected attendance upon the lectures would not even be admitted to examination. He would find himself either summarily "dropped" or required to take the work over again the next year.

The fact is recognized that it is desirable to combine theory and practice in the regular work of the school, and such a course is pursued in so far as it has appeared practicable. With this end in view, moot courts are held, in which students not only discuss cases previously assigned them for that purpose by the Faculty, but are required to draft appropriate pleadings and prepare a brief in which the rules of law applicable to the given case are stated under appropriate divisions and sustained by the authorities. These courts are presided over by the professor lecturing for the day, who at the conclusion of the argument reviews the case and gives his decision upon the points involved. The effort to make not merely theoretical but practical lawyers may be illustrated by a reference to the course pursued in the teaching of equity pleading and procedure.

The class is divided into sections of four each; and each section is required to conduct two cases in equity through all their stages, from the filing of the original bills to the enrolment of the final decrees, two of the section acting as solicitors for the complainant in one case, and as solicitors for the defendant in the other. For these suits statements of fact are prepared which, in the aggregate, involve questions in every branch of equity jurisdiction, and necessitate the use of every form of equity pleading. These statements of fact involve not only questions of pleading and procedure but also questions of law, so that the glamour of a legal doubt is thrown over each case, and success is made to depend upon skill in pleading combined with knowledge of equity