Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/450



Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor,, 15½ Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

E have received from Philadelphia the following anonymous communication, which may prove of interest to our readers:—

Editor "Green Bag,"— In replying in your June number to a friendly hint from the "Canadian Law Times," intimating that, from the ability displayed in the columns of your magazine, the motto might be very appropriately changed from that of "a useless" to "a useful but entertaining magazine for lawyers," you stated by way of upholding its correctness that "the sole aim and object of the 'Green Bag' was to entertain lawyers;" that you proposed to do "the entertaining with useless (so far as being of any practical value is concerned) material;" and further, that "if by eschewing everything in the shape of digests or reports of cases, throwing aside in fact all that would be useful to the lawyer in his practice, and presenting to our readers only light legal miscellany, we give an hour's pleasure to the profession, our mission is accomplished, and we have justified our claim to being, as our title asserts, a 'useless but entertaining magazine for lawyers. This reply, though modest and unassuming, is yet a very pleasing one. It explains your ideas, which it must be said are original, and were well conceived in the first instance; but it does not set out what is known to all your readers and subscribers,—viz., that the "Green Bag" is eminently deserving of liberal patronage and support, and of being classed not only as a useful, but a decidedly entertaining magazine for both lawyers and others. Pleased with its tone and contents, it has occurred to your correspondent to write you upon a matter which is, or which ought to be, of moment to the members of the legal profession—whether his "material" may be adjudged as neither useful or entertaining but the reverse, rests with you to decide. Could he, however, by means of his letter bring about any result of "practical" value, his object will have been accomplished. In your correspondent's manner of stating things, his real opinions with regard to the necessity of having at the bar only such as have been thoroughly trained and educated can readily be discerned.

Were you, Mr. Editor, to be connected with a large law-book publishing-house, and to be daily subjected to the visits of lawyers, and to answering numberless questions with regard to reported cases; it is more than likely you would be led to the conclusion, either that the education of these lawyers had been sadly neglected, or that the "digests and reports of cases" as at present published, are not so "useful" to the lawyer as you have been hitherto led to believe. While it may be agreeable to your sense of duty and of right, while it may be more in unison with your own ideas (induced through a thorough course of legal training) to publish such statements as this, viz., that a law student and a lawyer "must have a clear vision, not only of the result he wishes to produce, but of all the methods by which, under varying circumstances, he may find it possible and expedient to produce it. Above all, he must know the reason of everything he is to do, the principles which underlie all parts of his employment;" yet the facts, at least from your correspondents' standpoint, all go to show that the study of methods by means of which to produce results enters but little into the calculations or thoughts of the lawyer,—he cares not so much for the principles of law, as he does for the decisions made. As to how the latter came to be made,—by what train of reasoning, or upon what principle of law,—he troubles not his brain. His sole idea is to apply the decisions to some similar case he has on hand, or to one which has the semblance of being similar. It may be all well enough to quote from John Davies. when he stated that ofttimes truth would be concealed and suppressed, fraud be hid and undiscovered, wrong escape and go unpunished, were it not for the wisdom and diligence of the professors of the law; it may be well enough to ask with him, "doth not this profession every day comfort such as are grieved, counsel such as are perplexed, relieve such as are circumvented, prevent the ruin of the improvident, take the prey out of the mouth of the oppressor, protect the orphan, the widow, and the stranger; in short, as Job speaketh, is she not 'legs to the lame, and eyes to the blind? But Sir John had an exalted idea of the profession. To the lawyers of the present day, he is regarded as having been old-fogyish.