Full-Time Course For Law Students Urged

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30157, 14 June 1963, Page 13

Full-Time Course For Law Students Urged

The only way to teach law to students was in the same manner as in all other faculties of the university. Professor G. W. Keeton said in Christchurch last night. Professor Keeton, hedd of the department of laws and professor of English law at the University of London, was speaking on legal education and the legal profession in England, the second in a series of three lectures arranged by the adult education department of Canterbury University. It was still not fully accepted that law teaching was just as integral a- part of a university as any other branch of learning, said Professor Keeton. It was just as taxing a discipline, and deserved the same allocation of staff and money as any other faculty. “I am aware that I must tread delicately when I suggest this in New Zealand, but I believe that a proper education in law can be given only to a full-time student," he said. “The only way to teach a law student is in the same way as an arts, science, engineering, or any other student.”

It had been impressively stated that the department of laws at London had a staff of 25 with six professors, said Professor Keeton. As recently as 1939, however, the staff had been only seven, five of them part-time. The staff of 25 was still not adequate for the expansion he was determined to achieve. Some new universities had told him simply that they had not considered the question of a law school. A shatteringly large proportion of the names on the law examination lists in England were of non-English students, and

while their presence at English universities was welcomed it showed a stfeady drop in intake of English students. A concerted effort was required to halt it. A commonly-held view in England was that New Zealand's legal profession had solved the problem of division within the pro-fession, as many men were both barristers and solicitors. However, since he had been in the country he had realised that there was a distinct division separating *the Bar. and many persons had intimated that they wished this broadened. In England at present many persons were inclined to the opposite view.