The Gazette 1976

GAZETTE

JUNE/JULY 1976

S.A.D.S.I. INAUGURAL MEETING The President, Mr. P. C. Moore, presided at the Inaugural Meeting of the 90th Session of the Solicitors' Apprentices Debating Society which was held in the Library of the Incorporated Law Society, Four Courts, on Friday, 26th March, 1976. The customary humorous and inaccurate minutes of the previous meeting were read and signed. O 'Ma r a. Society's Silver Medal : John Bourke & R. Vincent Shannon. Legal Debate President's Gold Medal : Niall Sheridan. Society's Silver Medal : David Leon. Impromptu Speeches Vice-President's Gold Medal : Niall Sheridan. Vice-President's Silver Medal : Eugene Tormey. Irish Debate Society's Parchment : Declan Sherlock & Maria Durand. First Year Speeches Society's Silver Medal : Michael D. Mu r phy Replica of Auditorial Insignia: Brian P. O'Reilly. A presentation of Waterford Glass was made by the President, on behalf of past Auditors of the Debating Society, to Willie O'Reilly and Mrs. O'Reilly to mark the continuous and loyal service they had rendered the Society for 30 years. The President then called upon the Auditor, Mr. Niall Sheridan, B.C.L., to deliver his Inaugural Address on "Apprenticeship, Theory and Practice". 130 years ago a Select Committee was established by the House of Commons to report on the state of legal education. It recommended that the Universities should play a leading part in providing an education in law. 1 he Committee recognised that "this would not be sufficient for future practitioners, because the Universi- ties were not designed for and were unwilling to play the role of providing professional training and therefore a special institution would be required for this purpose". In the Report of the Ormrod Committee on Legal Education in 1971 the same conclusions were expressed in the following terms "The demands which the legal profession had to meet, and the roles which professional lawyers are called upon to play in Society, are so varied, and require such different qualities, that the profession will always need to recruit men and women of widely differing character, temperament and intellec- tual attainments. Schemes of training and the require- ments for qualification must reflect the need for variety in the intake to the profession. They must not be un- necessarily rigid or overdemanding in time, lest the abler students are discouraged from entering, nor must standards be set so high that the profession will lose the services of people who are capable of becoming valuable members of it". 102 Awards were made to the following : Oratory Incorporated Law Society's Gold Medal: Ciaran INAUGURAL ADDRESS: Apprenticeship, Theory and Practice By NIALL SHERIDAN, B .C .L.

"The professional lawyer requires a sufficiently gene- ral and broadbased education to enable him to adapt himself successfully to new and different situations as his career develops. He must acquire an adequate know- ledge of the more important branches of the law and its principles the ability to handle fact both analytically and synthetically and to apply the law to situations of fact; and the capacity to work not only with clients but also with experts in other disciplines. He must also acquire the professional skills and techniques which are essential to practice and a grasp of the ethos of the profession; he must also cultivate a critical approach to existing law, an appreciation of its social conse- quences and an interest in and positive attitude to appropriate development and change. To achieve these aims a combination of education at university level and apprenticeship in its widest sense is necessary. The training process must therefore be planned in three stages—the academic stage, the professional stage, comprising institutional training and in training and continuing education after qualification." The foregoing paragraphs should be the "Credo" for anybody who has an interest in Legal Education. The bones of the Ormrod recommendations mirrored in nearly all respects the findings of the Commission on Higher Education in Ireland. Society's Report on Legal Education The reports of both the Society of Young Solicitors and the Solicitors' Apprentices' Debating Society which were published in 1967, coming out, as they did, in favour of a Law Degree as an entry requirement to a profes- sional Law School, came to basically the same conclu- sions as the two Government appointed Commissions. So the universal opinion is that a University Degree is an essential part of Legal Training. Now the Universities seem to be moving towards an approach to the teaching of Law in a Sociological context. University Degree essential In 1965 there were only three full time professors, eight part time professors, two full time lecturers, two part time lecturers in the four Universities in the Republic of Ireland. The Convocation of the National University of Ireland submitted at that time that "the Law Staffs of the University should include an adequate number of full time teachers to give the Law Schools cohesion and to have the time and facilities for original work". Since the publication of the Report of the Commission on Higher Education there has been vast improvements in the staffing arrangements in the Uni- versities. It was the lack of full time lecturers that was central to the problem in our Law Faculties. In 1974/75 in U.C.D. alone there were eleven full time teachers of Law and four part time lecturers. Although the number of full time students also increased from 146 to about 450, the ratio of full time staff to students halved in that period. This is in direct contrast to the situation in 1959 when the Board of Visitors held appointments by U.C D of college Lecturers and Assistant Lecturers on a yearly basis legally invalid. This practice caused un- certainty among the staff. The Board of Visitors also found that there was a policy of not filling vacancies which constituted a breach of duty. This policy was begun in 1949 and had been expanded in 1953. Understaffing in Universities The chief reason for the gross understaffing in the Universities, and this still exists today, is that there are six Universities catering for a relatively small student