Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/478

Rh siders will result most effectively in fixing in the student's mind the work-a-day rules of law, but the aim is to combine the best methods of all the schools. Some read lectures carefully written out. Some take a head note or two of some leading principle or case, and discuss it with the young men during the hour. Some draw their subject from chapters of a text-book, which must be read and re-read by the pupils during the week. In Practice, blackboard work in the drawing of the commoner legal documents is much used in illustration of its general principles as they occur. In Evidence, students learn what testimony means by seeking to prove facts in mock examinations, matching wits with one another, under the supervision of some trial lawyer. In Negotiable Instruments, the students first have explained to them what a negotiable instrument is, and then have papers given them, to determine whether the particular instrument they have under consideration is a negotiable instrument or not. In Constitutional Law, they first study the Constitution, then they hear its interpretation by Judge Daniels, and afterward write of it in theses.

TRACY C. BECKER.

In short, the picture that the instructor, in his teaching, has before his mind, is the lawyer sitting in his office hearing facts told by clients, and applying principles to them; the lawyer in the business world dealing with men, moulding men and things in their progress to conformity with law; the lawyer in court hearing facts, adducing facts, struggling with facts, the trenchant weapons of the legal arena. And they seek to inform the student to this end upon the same theory that other teachers would in teaching a pupil to run an engine or build a house. These experienced men show the beginner what the law is, and how it is applied; and their instruction, after this, consists in giving facts as they will come to the students in their future practice, and making them work out the legal solution for themselves. Stress is laid upon the last more than upon the first. Mining into the puzzling tangle of cases, and seeking to remember them as one would remember the Archimedean propositions, is not deemed important. The aim is to train lawyers equipped for office or court work, and to do this it is necessary to under stand the law as a practical science.

In this aim the office connection is a most efficient aid to the school. By means of this the students learn thoroughly what the nature of important legal documents is, inasmuch as they copy them. They draw mortgages, deeds, leases, and contracts. They see wills drafted, and hear consultations in reference to them. They learn by practical observation the meaning of that most complex institution, the "trust." In listening to the affairs of business concerns they comprehend, as they could never learn from a teacher's lips, the application of the rules of mercantile law. They are expected, as soon as they show themselves competent, to take charge and