TOO MANY LAWYERS

Evening Star, Issue 22229, 6 January 1936, Page 3

TOO MANY LAWYERS

POSITION IN MELBOURNE For years in Melbourne many people have idly wondered how the numerous candidates at the University who are successful in the final medical and law examinations manage to get a living in those professions (says the Melbourne correspondent of the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald’). Surely, it is said, the community is not sufficiently unhealthy and litigious to provide a decent living for all those who complete their training ; as doctors and lawyers, let alone to ; furnish the rich prizes which the learped professions are hopefully believed io provide. The vital statistics do not reveal how many briefless barristers and practitioners without patients starve io death every year; but as far as the law is concerned an authoritative warning was given recently that the profession was overcrowded. Professor K. H. Bailey, Dean of the Faculty of Law at :thc University Council, said that more law students were qualifying each year' than could possibly be absorbed in the legal profession. The volume of legal business in proportion to population was decreasing, he said. Provided i that all law students clearly understood that they could not necessarily expect a secure position in the legal profession, he continued, he was glad to see "the number of students maintained, as the law course was a good training for the Public Service or a business career. Strange to say, the professor of engineering. Professor Kernot. reported an opposite state of affairs in the engineering school. More positions 1 were offering in the engineering world than there were graduates to fill them. So here is a challenge to young Australia to take off its coat and roll up its sleeves. Shortly after these reports were made to 1 the council the vice-chancellor (Dr R. E.: Priestly) issued.a statement indicating that the university authorities might have to restrict admittance to certain degree courses. This, however, had no relation to the overcrowding of certain professions, but concerned finance solely. Pointing out that the average fees of students paid onlv 40 per cent, of the cost of their education. Dr Priestley said that if the fxovermiient were unable to give greater| monetary aid the university might have to “ draw in its horns.”

The inadequacy of Government support is an old complaint of those interestel in the institution. Not all students, of course! are the sons and daughters of rich men, and many find present fees a burden ; hut an increased Government grant would hardly commend itself to- the general taxpayer. Ha would ask, not without justification, “ Why should a greater burden bo placed on me in order that other men may continue to be relieved of threefifths of the cost of their sons’- and daughters’ education?”