LEGAL PRACTITIONERS

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1930, Page 15

LEGAL PRACTITIONERS

PROPOSED LEGISLATION.

POWERS OF UNIVERSITY.

A Bill to confer on the University of New Zealand the sole control of the educational qualifications required of candidates for admission as barristers or solicitors of the Supreme Court has been introduced by the Attorney-Gen-eral, Sir Thomas Sidey. If passed it would come into force in January, 1931. The Bill introduces a new provision that, except under the authority of the Supreme Court, no person admitted when under the age of 25 years shall practise in any district as a solicitor, either on his own account or as a member of a partnership firm of which no member is over the age of 25 year®, without having first obtained the written consent of the council of the law society of such district. The maximum •number of members of these district councils is increased from nine to eleven.

The foregoing provisions are contained in the Law Practitioners Amendment Bill. There is also an amendment of the New Zealand University Act, introduced by Sir Thomas Sidey, to provide control for a new system of legal train*

ing. Under this amendment there would be established a council of legal education, to consist of: (a) Two Judges of the Supreme 'our. (one of whom may be the Chief Justice), to be appointed upon the recommendation- of the Chief Justice; (b) two persons to be appointed upon the recommendation of the Council of the New Zealand Law Society; and (eV two persons, each being a professor of law or lecturer in law of a constituent college, to be appointed upon the recommendation of the Senate. They would hold office for three years. The University Senate would be empowered to makv statutes touching legal education and to prescribe fees for law examinations and certificates, a function hitherto in the hands of Supreme Court Judges.