E.—7a,

49

ledge, practical training. Much evidence in regard to each of these will, be found in the statements submitted to us by professors and legal practitioners. The recommendation of the New Zealand Law Society that the standard of entrance to the course for solicitors and barristers should be the examination prescribed for the Junior University Scholarship appears to us to be a sound one, and we therefore endorse it. As regards the law professional subjects for solicitors and for barristers, we consider that these should be brought into line with the requirements in the Australian universities, and that for the LL.B. degree a greater number of culture subjects of general education should be included. This will naturally lengthen the course to one of four years" duration, but we see no reason why entrance to an important and honourable profession and one distinguished especially as a learned profession should be gained by. a course shorter in duration than almost any other. Part-time students should have their subjects each, year severely limited in number in order that approved methods of teaching and of study may be the rule. As regards practical training, the Legislature shouid be asked, to amend the Legal Practitioners Act and to provide for this essential portion of a lawyer's education. Further, in order that the important subject of legal education may be safeguarded and improved from time to time, we recommend that a Council of Legal Education be formed, consisting of representatives of the Judges, of the legal practitioners, and of the University, and that to this body be entrusted the powers now vested in. the Judges alone. That reform is urgently needed within the University itself is evident from the statement of Professor K. M. Algie. xlfter stating that the students who take the LL.B. course and the Law Professional Examination for solicitors come to the university direct from the secondary schools at the age of seventeen or eighteen years, he goes on to say, " The students —-in the full flush of youthful optimism— commonly take four subjects in their first year, and, if successful, they sit in the remainder iti their second year. My first submission is that a course of study extending over a period of only two years is too short to be of any real value. In fact, such a course is a reflection upon the general standing of the profession. A second submission is that the present course leads, and can lead only, to ' cram ' in the worst sense of that word. A law student must in the nature of things learn off by heart a great portion of his work ; he must have a large number of specific rules and principles at his command, and in many cases the actual words of such rules and principles are of paramount importance. But he may well be asked to do more than this. He must have an intelligent appreciation of the meaning of such rules, and an ability to apply them. Now, can it be contended that a lad fresh from school is able to plunge straight into the study of four legal subjects ? It is idle to say that he may take two if he likes ; he will not do anything of the kind when the regulations and time-table permit four or five to be taken and when his predecessors have taken four. And., again, will it be contended that such a student can understand the niceties and subtleties contained in the books he is reading ? To take a course of examples : imagine his difficulties in an attempt to master such doctrines as that of Past Consideration and that of Remoteness of Damage. And these are only two selected from the vast field of his so-called study. I believe I am right when I say that he does not really master his work ; he cannot do so. He has not the mental equipment at that age to understand and appreciate the points that baffle mature lawyers, and he has not the time to grapple fully with what may be termed the outstanding principles of his subjects. How can it be really expected of him ? He attends, at the Auckland College, one lecture a day on each day of the week and spends the rest of his day at work in the law office. In a subject like Contract he has, roughly, forty-eight lectures, and in that time he has to be piloted over the difficulties in the law of Contract, of Agency, Sale of Goods, Partnership, and Bills of Exchange. Last year I was able to devote four hours to the Sale of Goods Act, and two, I think, to the Bills of Exchange Act. This is only typical of what happens in other subjects. The law as to joint-stock companies forms a portion of the syllabus for Property, 11 : last year I explained the intricate problems of this subject to a ' will' class in three hours. My point here is that we ask too much of our students in the time they have available, and we necessarily force them to cram by memory what will suffice for an examination ; their work

Testimony of professors of law as to defects in the course.

Students take too many subjects.

7—e. n.