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.

Awards were made to the following :

Oratory

Incorporated

Law Society's

Gold Medal:

Ciaran

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".

INAUGURAL ADDRESS:

Apprenticeship, Theory and Practice

By NIALL SHERIDAN, B

.L.

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

"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