The Gazette 1967/71

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