72 / 736
Legal Education
Many of my predecessors in their annual state
ments have referred to the importance of keeping
our systm of legal education abreast of modern
developments. It has been much to the forefront
in discussions during the past twelve months, both
at Council level and at meetings of the Society
of Young Solicitors, and of the Solicitors' Appren
tices Debating Society. It is good to see that our
younger members realise the importance of this
most vital subject for the future of the profession.
We must realise that the pattern of legal work is
changing. The Law Reform Programme of the
Department of Justice is in its initial stages. We
must look forward
to the possibility that this
country will be a member of the E.E.C. during the
lifetime of our younger members and indeed pro-
babily during the practising lives of many of our
senior members. We must study the problems pre
sented
by
the vast number of subjects with which
a practising lawyer must be familiar if he is not a
specialist. Subjects which were important during
our period of apprenticeship may recede while
other new and unfamiliar branches of law may
take their place. I refer particularly to town plan
ning law, which in my early days and indeed until
comparatively recently, was not a preoccupation
of the ordinary practising lawyer. We need only
look around us to-day to see the importance of
this subject of which we have the concrete exam
ples in
the rapiu development changes
taking
place in our cities and towns and indeed through
part of our countryside. One of the major prob-
jems presenting itself to the Council of the Society
and the Court of Examiners is to decide what
should be taught to our students, when it should
be taught and the best method of enabling them
TO acquire the type of knowledge which a practising
lawyer must have in this vast field. It has been
well said that no lawyer, not even the Supreme
Court can be expected to know all the law at any
one time. The Court however, has the advantage
of skilled exposition by the advocates who appear
before it, who analyse every aspect and facet of
the problem, before the Court is called upon tc
give its decisions on the materials before it. The
practising lawyer, particularly the solicitor is often
called upon to advise on unexplored fields. The
absence of up-to-date legal text-books combined
with the haphazard and complex nature of modern
legislation makes this an exceedingly difficult task.
We therefore welcome the assistance of our youn
ger members and of our students in dealing with
this problem and we look forward to receiving
the memorandum which has been prepared by the
Society of Young Solicitors.
It would, however, be completely wrong to
suggest or to assume that this problem has not
teen tackled by the Society until the year 1967.
There have been two major investigations of this
subject during the past twenty years. In 1950, fol
lowing a study by a special committee of the
Council, the whole system of education and exa
mination was radically changed. Down to that year
the Society's law school consisted of two lecturers
who delivered courses of lectures on Common Law
and Equity respectively. The examination system
consisted of a preliminary intermediate and final
examination, and the student taking his final exa
mination at the end of his apprenticeship was
examined over the whole syllabus of legal sub
jects. The intermediate examination was merely
intended to test the knowledge acquired by the
student at elementary level. The new system es
tablished in 1950 was based on the principle that
no student can reasonably be expected to retain in
his head for the week of his final examination the
whole range of legal knowledge. A system of
staged examinations was adopted whereby the
student was examined at final level in the law of
property, contract and tort at the first law, and
having been examined in those subjects was not
required to present himself for further examina
tion. The second and third law deal with the more
practical applications of property, contract, and
tort together with practice and procedure. The
Society's examination system
is now a staged
system whereby the student progresses from the
more academic subjects to their practical applica
tion. The lecture system, as you know, has been
arranged on the same principle. Since 1950 the
Society recognises the University Law Schools for
the
subjects
of property, contract,
tort and
equity, while the Society's Law Schools deal with
the practical vocational subjects of company law,
taxation,
conveyancing,
succession
law,
pro
cedure, practice of the Courts and book-keeping
and accounts. Following a further study of the
system in 1961 the Society submitted a memoran
dum to the Commission on Higher Education pro
posing radical changes in the whole system. The
principal points made in the memorandum were,
1. The present system is too rigid and cannot
64