Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/238

 Law School of the University of Minnesota.

213

rights and applying legal remedies in the regular and protracted course of careful practical concerns of life. study, under the guidance of thoughtful instructors having that object in view, is To train the mind to legal thought, to de velop its reasoning power, to strengthen its incomparably more efficient than the ad memory, to energize and purify the imagi vantages of the best-equipped office can pos nation, to cultivate the art of statement in sibly be. apt and legal phraseology, and to store the The supposed advantages of an office for mind with legal conceptions is the work of gaining practical knowledge are also largely time and the first essential for intellectual imaginary. The preparation of all legal

papers can be just as delight in the field of jurisprudence. well accomplished in the lecture-room as in It is said that the the office, and with diamond is the hardest of known substances, the additional benefit but the human mind of having the forms studied, analyzed, and is harder than the dia explained. If in time mond. To ameliorate past too little atten its rough asperities tion has been bestowed is alone the work of upon the matter of time and persistent practice, it is now effort. holding a more im The mind may be portant place in the crowded with facts courses of study in but not with disci the law schools. pline. The latter is It is the object of a growth, an internal the Legal Department development, not a of the University of mere accretion, or a Minnesota, to make taking on of some ex the matter of Plead ternal covering for the ing and Practice gen sole purpose of exhi erally very prominent. bition upon examina A thorough drill in tion day. WILLIAM S. PATTEE. "Stephen on Plead Moreover, this men ing " is required. The tal discipline is not im parted. It can only be acquired. It comes Common Law regarding the subject must from the mind's own effort, not from efforts be mastered; and every practising attorney applied from without. Protracted effort of well understands that a knowledge of pri the mind in contemplation of legal truth is mary rights, however extensive and accu the only path to legal culture and mental rate, is of little consequence if he cannot bring the matter of their violation properly power. before the attention of the court. In two, three, or four years only a begin As before intimated, the method of in ning can be made at best, and to thrust one's self into the ranks of the profession struction pursued by this institution is by without even such time for actual study, is combining text-book work with lectures suicidal to the student and harmful to the upon certain subjects. There is something peculiarly definite in a distinct proposition, clientage. To secure this end of mental training, a carefully worded, and afterward thoroughly 28