Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/368

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Published Monthly, at $3.00 per annum.

BagSingle numbers, 50 cents.

Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, Horace W. Fuller, 15^ Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities or curiosities, facetia, anecdotes, etc. THE GREEN BAG. T^HE following letter from a well-known writer 1 gives some valuable 'advice as to the best method of obtaining a knowledge of the law : Editor of the " Green Bag " : The following letter was written in answer to one from a law clerk, saying, " I desire to ask you, if it will not take too much of your valuable time, to give me a few points as to which way is the best for a young man to get a knowledge of law. I know you could say that that question is answered by the word ' study; ' but if I tell you my situation, I do not doubt but what you will be able to give me a more definite reply, and one that will be of intrinsic value to me. I am of the age of twenty-six years, with a very ordinary education, but I confess with ambition, and that o£ the kind that likes to mark high. Have no other resource but my own labor. ... I have been in a law office about a year. Since that time I have made very little advancement in the study of the law, having other studies to occupy my time. But now I have commenced; still, not without being confused, — for one tells me to read the ancient authors, and another to study practice, while the third informs me that to make a success at the law as a court lawyer I should study Latin." To these inquiries I replied as follows : —• "If you are actively engaged in an office and have not a great deal of time to study, I advise you to begin by reading, not whole books, but short pas sages about what you are engaged upon. If you have access to Parsons on Contracts or Kent's Com mentaries, or a good edition of Blackstone, or Greenlenf or Wharton on Evidence, or Shearman and Redfield on Negligence, or Schouleron Wills, or Bishop's Imoks, or Jones on Mortgages, etc., then when you have a deed to copy look in the index of Kent's Commentaries for what he says about deeds, read it carefully and slowly, and compare it with the deed in hand. If you have a contract to copy, notice what kind of a contract it is, and see what Parsons says about that kind of a contract. Do not read much 41

nor fast, and make it a point to see how it bears on what you have in hand. After you have read a pas sage shut the book, and endeavor to state to yourself what he said. Take a sheet of paper and write down a short account of what he said. If there is some thing you do not understand, write down your ques tion, and remember that 's a thing you have to find out sometime when you have a chance to ask a ques tion of a lawyer at leisure, or when you are reading some other book When a new volume of Court of Appeals decisions or Hun comes in, look into the in dex and see if you find a case on any of the subjects you have been reading about; if so, see if you can understand the case; but don't read too much. You have no idea how much you will learn in a year if you get one new idea clearly grasped every day. "If you have time outside, say in the Y. M. C. A. or Mercantile Library, take Johnson's or Appleton's Cyclopedia, and read slowly and carefully the article on the subject you have last been reading about in some law book. Notice who wrote the article, if it is signed. After you have put the book away write out the pith of the new things you have learned. Note your questions. Keep your memoranda, and at the end of the month or quarter read them over, and keep what knowledge you have got clear and strong in your mind.' Use your memoranda, not in stead of remembering, but only to make you clear and exact about what it is you want to remember. "In all this do not read too much at a time. One page or one paragraph every day in connection with the work you have in hand is worth more to you than fifty pages a day, as law students sometimes read. "When you come to a Latin word or phrase in your law reading, look it up in a law dictionary or glossary if convenient; but never look up a second one if you find you have forgotten the first, until you have fixed the first so you won't forget it again. In other words, I sum up the whole in saying, as far as possi ble for the present read only that which is useful, and immediately useful, and intelligible in connection with your work; and when you have read something useful don't read anything more to make you forget it because of haste or desire to get on. "If you find these suggestions help you, you will easily find by and by the way to extend your studies to things not apparently immediately useful, but per haps more important nevertheless." Yours truly, Austin Abbott.