hazard when not engaged in the drudgery of a clerk. Of course the training he got depended entirely upon his mentor. Some lawyers were so famous as teachers that their offices were always crowded with students. Judge Reeve, at Litchfield, Connecticut, is said in the course of thirty-eight years to have taught (with the aid of several assistants) over a thousand pupils, arranged in regular classes—a kind of “practical”’ school of law.[1]
But neither in England nor America had there ever been a formal attempt to teach the subject theoretically, without calling upon the learner to copy documents, look up witnesses, or “devil” in the courts. As Parker himself put it, law students under his plan would have “one or two years devoted to study only, under a capable instructor, before they shall enter the office of a counsellor to obtain a knowledge of practice.”[2] Still less had there ever been a distinct faculty of law, “under the patronage of a university,” intended primarily for graduates, and raising the profession, educationally speaking, to the same dignity as medicine and divinity. In establishing such a department, therefore, Harvard had
- ↑ Mr. Rawle calls attention to the fact that up to the end of the Revolution many of the best lawyers in this country were educated in London. It is estimated that between 1760 and 1785 about 115 Americans, mostly from the southern colonies, were admitted to the Inns of Court, and perhaps a third as many more before that period. Harv. Grad. Mag., xxvi, 177.
- ↑ Inaugural address, ubi supra.
