129 / 244
GAZETTE
SEPTEMBER 1979
Legal Education
The Road Ahead
The text of the 1979 John Mathews Memorial Lecture delivered to members of the Society at
Blackball Place, Dublin.
By K. F. O'Leary
You do me a very great honour indeed, Mr. President,
in inviting me to deliver this the first John Mathews
Memorial Lecture; an honour enhanced, I feel, by the fact
that it is to be delivered on the occasion of the official
opening of your great new Law School here in Blackhall
Place. I am conscious too of the compliment you pay me
in asking me to speak on the very important topic of legal
education. Many eminent leaders of our profession have
written and spoken about it in recent times; it has been the
subject of reports by special Committees, and of papers
and discussions at a number of important conferences. It
has many facets; it poses a number of very difficult
problems, quite a few of which are still not satisfactorily
resolved, and some still substantially unexplored. I am not
so presumptuous as to think that I can add any new
dimension to what has already been said about it; I set
myself a much more modest target. And so, what I would
like to do tonight is to make a brief survey of the legal
educational process in general — at least, as I see it;
unfortunately not all see it in quite the same way, and
therein lies one of our problems — and then to point up a
few of the major issues I think we should be preparing to
face in the years immediately ahead.
But here I think I should make a confession, and also
give you an assurance. The confession that I have to
make is that the subject is one that holds a peculiar
fascination and interest for me. The result is that it has
been known on some occasions in the past that when
speaking of it I have quite forgotten the passing of time.
The assurance I give is that that will not happen tonight.
Mr. Buckley, good steward and trainer that he is, has
given me my riding instructions, and I shall obey them.
Besides, I will try to keep in mind the advice that Mr.
Disraeli once gave to a young member or Parliament who
had just delivered his maiden speech in the House of
Commons — a speech, it would seem, that was rather
long. Meeting him in the corridor afterwards, Disraeli
complimented him on his speech, but went on to remind
him that, to be immortal, a speech did not also have to be
eternal. And I will see that I do not earn the kind of
rebuke that Sir Alexander Cockbum once administered to
a young Counsel who, towards the end of a very long
address, apologised for taking up so much of His
Lordship's time. "Time?", exclaimed the Chief Justice,
"Time? Why, you have exhausted time; you are now
encroaching on eternity!"
The introduction of Legal Practice Courses, here as in
other parts of the world, marks a major achievement in
the provision of better legal education, better preparation
for the practice of law. Of that I have no doubt. What we
have to remember about them though is that they
themselves are not the answer to better legal education;
they do not have some magic formula of their own that
will produce better lawyers. They are a part, one
ingredient if you like, of a new concept of legal education.
That concept, broadly speaking, sees legal education as
being no longer provided by apprenticeship alone, nor by
a combination of Law School and apprenticeship, but by
a combination of Law School, Legal Practice Course and
apprenticeship training. And Legal Practice Course and
apprenticeship training. And Legal Practice Courses must
be seen in the context of that overall scheme of training.
Now it seems to me that if such a scheme of training is to
achieve its designed end, the first requirement is that there
be a proper definition of roles between the various parts of
it, and that there be a harmonious relationship between
them. It is about those things also that I want to talk to
you tonight.
But to put what I want to say into context, and to point
out its importance in the overall scheme of things, I think
I must first say something about legal education in
general, and particularly about this new concept of it to
which I have referred. Not all are yet fully familiar with it,
and not all who speak about it do so with the same basic
assumptions in mind. It is as well, therefore, that I make
my own position clear.
The Lawyer's Identity
The central question around which any system of legal
education turns is the definition of the object of that
education: the lawyer, the practising lawyer. And so we
must first see what we mean by that term. What is a lawyer
for the purpose of deciding an appropriate form of
education for him?
It has been said that the idea of what a lawyer is is
"more Protean and elusive than (that) of the reasonable
man", and that apart from a "general agreement that he
is a good fellow, (and) not to be confused with the
grasping shyster of the world of fiction" he has no- other
characteristics than can be agreed upon.
1
There is, of course, a difficulty in finding a satisfactory
definition of a lawyer for this, or indeed for any other,
Contributors to this Issue:
Kevin F. O'Leary, Director, Legal Workshop, Australian
National University, Canberra.
Gabriel McGann, B.A. Mod. (Dublin), LL.M. (Yale). Barrister
at-law, Legal Assistant to the Law Reform Commission.
Denis Greene, Solicitor, practising in Dulbin.
131