The Gazette 1958-61

practical task of wise and effective advice to clients and of aiding the courts in the administration of justice. An adequate background of general legal theory cannot be provided in the relatively short time devoted to lectures at present, especially when instruction is at odd times taken off from practical work in an office. The minimum period needed for such a background is four years uninterrupted, intensive study of legal theory. After that, when the theory has been mastered and examinations passed in the theory, there should be a practical apprentice ship of whole-time employment for two to three years in a solicitor's office. Then, all entrants should be required to pass a professional qualifying examina tion in the running of a solicitor's office. In my address to you last May I referred to the fact that much of our legislation is antiquated and out of harmony with the present day requirements, and that many of our statutory orders which provide for the practical application of our law and for methods and procedure are just as outmoded, and are an incubus militating against the efficient and expeditious discharge of public work. A memo randum suggesting improvements in this outmoded and archiac procedure has been submitted by my Council to the Department of Justice. The Council noted with pleasure that the Minister for Justice, in answer to a Parliamentary question last June, stated that the task of Law Reform had been specifically assigned to the Parliamentary Secretary who had been recently appointed. Furthermore, in the Dail Debates on the z6th October last on the Second Reading of the Solicitors' (Amendment) Bill, the Parliamentary Secretary promised that his depart ment will do all they reasonably can to help the Society's efforts in the elimination of outmoded procedures which involve a waste of time, energy and money on the part of our profession and of the public. Law Reform is not a subject which commands popular appeal and the Government are to be congratulated on having the initiative to tackle it. If our outmoded laws were permitted to continue, such grave hardships would be caused to progres sively increasing section of the community that there might be disastrous results. Law Reform is a difficult and onerous responsibility. It will involve deep research, and detailed study of Comparative Law, if it is not to be in the nature of a read-made suit which is made to fit anyone but properly fits no one. The current feeling in my profession is one of complete good will towards the Parliamentary Secretary, who has the courage to tackle it, combined with certain doubts as to whether he will have adequate staff to help him. In England there is a

It cannot be altered by the profession to meet the changing needs of the public. The Law Society should have greater control over the system of education and apprenticeship of its students and should be entitled to prescribe the appropriate requirements subject to the approval of, say, the Chief Justice or of the President of the High Court. Law, being a profession, is not merely a source of livelihood. It carries with it a social responsibility, a duty to use the knowledge and training with which the lawyer is equipped to further the public good. As a member of a profession practising a learned art, a solicitor should have, not only a general culture, but a culture in his own avocation, which today calls for a learning beyond the practical technicalities of the system he is to practise. Our existing system of legal education does not instruct our students in the humanities and the social sciences, nor does it train them in the arts of investigation, reasoning and expression. Some of the social sciences, like economics and political science, deal with particular phases of human relationships. Law deals with all of them. Law, specially in recent years, has become vitally related to the social sciences. Statutes to regulate social services, to alleviate unemployment, to provide decent housing for the lower income groups—all deal with sociol ogical problems. Taxes and tariffs, wage and price controls, profoundly affect our national economy. Law is, therefore, a growing and not a static thing. The education to meet that development must also be a growing and not a static thing limited by statute. The old easement of light and air for the parlour window may gradually become an easement for unobstructed passage between one's television aerial and the transmitting tower. In view of the increasing complexities of our society, a legal training which confines itself to teaching such technicalities as the rule in Shelley's case, what constitutes offer and acceptance in the formation of a contract and the legal requisites of a valid will has abdicated its vital function, which is to equip its students properly for the important role they must play in the interests of their future clients. A proper legal training should give the students some knowledge and understanding of the interaction of all phases of human activity. It should impart to them an acute awareness of the continuous flow of the stream of history by showing how in the past the law has grown and expanded to meet new conditions and new needs, and how in the future it should develop in order to continue in this evolutionary process. A sound legal education should make and maintain a balance between training learned men as well as men learned in their art on the one hand ; and, on the other hand, men who are equal to the