LEGAL EDUCATION IN NEW ZEALAND

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 53, 26 November 1928, Page 13

LEGAL EDUCATION IN NEW ZEALAND

Sir, —“Legal practitioners,” said the Royal Commissioners in their report on university education in New Zealand, “have always been regarded as members of a learned profession, as, indeed, is shown by the customary courtesy of allusion to ‘my learned friend.’ It appears that, unless a marked change is effected in the legal education in the Dominion, this term runs the risk of being regarded as a delicate sarcasm.” “I do not know where you were trained,” said Mr. John Logan Stout, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court one day last week to a solicitor, LL.B, of the University of New Zealand, who was transgressing all the known rules of the laws of evidence and trampling upon most of the canons of what is known as “the etiquette of the profession,” until the exasperated Magistrate ordered the practitioner, to be taken into custody until the hearing of the case in which the contretemps occurred was ended. It is, happily, unusual for the Bench to deal so drastically with a practitioner appearing before it, and, I believe, unprecedented for a Stipendiary Magistrate to take such an extreme step as Mr. Stout took, although there are. too frequently,, cases in which offending solicitors try the patience of the Bench very severely, and I deem it a suitable opportunity to review the position generally, which I do, with your permission, by citing, at the outset, one pregnant passage in. Sir Harry Reichel's report in 1925.

Professor J. M. E. Garrow, 8.A., LL.B., of Victoria University College, stated (before the aforesaid Royal Commission) that “the present position is that the admission of candidates to practise as barristers and solicitors depends entirely upon the passing of certain examinations.” Therein the learned professor placed his finger upon the item essential to adequate training which is missing. Mr. J. B. Callan, 8.A., LL.B., Dean of the Faculty of Law at. Otago University College, Dunedin, said (inter nlia) that “the law professional examinations afford no sufficient test of a candidate's capacity to practise his profession in a manner creditable to himself generally or satisfactory to his clients.” Professor J. Adamson, M.A., LL.B., Dean of the Faculty of Law at Victoria University College. Wellington, .made the startlingly melancholy admission that “there is at present no law school in New Zealand.” I may add that, though three years have elapsed since that lugubrious lament was uttered, no attempt has yet been made to remedy the defect. The present system is at fault, as was clearly demonstrated by Professor R. M. Algie, LL.M., of Auckland University College, one of the ablest academic authorities on law in this Dominion, who, after raking the procedure fore and aft, concluded his trenchant remarks by saying: “I am attacking the system under which they (the students) are forced to work; it is a system which makes the examination the one and only goal, which offers no special inducement to a man to study his law for its own sake, and which, in fact, tends to concentrate his attention solei” upon a process of unintelligent cramming for those examinations.” , . The popular view of the work of a professor,” said Sir Harry Reichel, is that it is his duty to get students ready for examinations by giving them lectures, whereas his work should be concerned ‘not so much with filling the mind of the student with facts or theories as with calling forth his own individuality and stimulating him to mental effort Proceeding, Sir Harry Reichel added: “The standards of the legal course should be raised in each of the three elements of professional training, namely. (!) general culture, (2) professional knowledfe, (3) practical, training. . . - ft is, we think, practically. certain that, it a council of legal education is formed to supervise the education and training or lawyers, the council will see the necessity of establishing a fully equipped and staffed law school in the most suitable me to add my own recommendation that the system ,of articling, m vogue in England and in Australia, be reintroduced and made compulsory here. One result, I think, will be the raising of the standard of legal practitioners and less frequent repetition ° f SM.rto e ord U er “solicitor to be taken into ‘=ustody.-I c am, A etc. fi Wellington. November 17.