The Gazette 1979

SEPTEMBER 1979

GAZETTE

Legal Education The Road Ahead

The text of the 1979 John Mathews Memorial Lecture delivered to members of the Society at Blackball Place, Dublin.

By K. F. O'Leary

You do me a very great honour indeed, Mr. President, in inviting me to deliver this the first John Mathews Memorial Lecture; an honour enhanced, I feel, by the fact that it is to be delivered on the occasion of the official opening of your great new Law School here in Blackhall Place. I am conscious too of the compliment you pay me in asking me to speak on the very important topic of legal education. Many eminent leaders of our profession have written and spoken about it in recent times; it has been the subject of reports by special Committees, and of papers and discussions at a number of important conferences. It has many facets; it poses a number of very difficult problems, quite a few of which are still not satisfactorily resolved, and some still substantially unexplored. I am not so presumptuous as to think that I can add any new dimension to what has already been said about it; I set myself a much more modest target. And so, what I would like to do tonight is to make a brief survey of the legal educational process in general — at least, as I see it; unfortunately not all see it in quite the same way, and therein lies one of our problems — and then to point up a few of the major issues I think we should be preparing to face in the years immediately ahead. But here I think I should make a confession, and also give you an assurance. The confession that I have to make is that the subject is one that holds a peculiar fascination and interest for me. The result is that it has been known on some occasions in the past that when speaking of it I have quite forgotten the passing of time. The assurance I give is that that will not happen tonight. Mr. Buckley, good steward and trainer that he is, has given me my riding instructions, and I shall obey them. Besides, I will try to keep in mind the advice that Mr. Disraeli once gave to a young member or Parliament who had just delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons — a speech, it would seem, that was rather long. Meeting him in the corridor afterwards, Disraeli complimented him on his speech, but went on to remind him that, to be immortal, a speech did not also have to be eternal. And I will see that I do not earn the kind of rebuke that Sir Alexander Cockbum once administered to a young Counsel who, towards the end of a very long address, apologised for taking up so much of His Lordship's time. "Time?", exclaimed the Chief Justice, "Time? Why, you have exhausted time; you are now encroaching on eternity!" The introduction of Legal Practice Courses, here as in other parts of the world, marks a major achievement in the provision of better legal education, better preparation for the practice of law. Of that I have no doubt. What we have to remember about them though is that they

themselves are not the answer to better legal education; they do not have some magic formula of their own that will produce better lawyers. They are a part, one ingredient if you like, of a new concept of legal education. That concept, broadly speaking, sees legal education as being no longer provided by apprenticeship alone, nor by a combination of Law School and apprenticeship, but by a combination of Law School, Legal Practice Course and apprenticeship training. And Legal Practice Course and apprenticeship training. And Legal Practice Courses must be seen in the context of that overall scheme of training. Now it seems to me that if such a scheme of training is to achieve its designed end, the first requirement is that there be a proper definition of roles between the various parts of it, and that there be a harmonious relationship between them. It is about those things also that I want to talk to you tonight. But to put what I want to say into context, and to point out its importance in the overall scheme of things, I think I must first say something about legal education in general, and particularly about this new concept of it to which I have referred. Not all are yet fully familiar with it, and not all who speak about it do so with the same basic assumptions in mind. It is as well, therefore, that I make The central question around which any system of legal education turns is the definition of the object of that education: the lawyer, the practising lawyer. And so we must first see what we mean by that term. What is a lawyer for the purpose of deciding an appropriate form of education for him? It has been said that the idea of what a lawyer is is "more Protean and elusive than (that) of the reasonable man", and that apart from a "general agreement that he is a good fellow, (and) not to be confused with the grasping shyster of the world of fiction" he has no- other characteristics than can be agreed upon. 1 There is, of course, a difficulty in finding a satisfactory definition of a lawyer for this, or indeed for any other, Contributors to this Issue: Kevin F. O'Leary, Director, Legal Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra. Gabriel McGann, B.A. Mod. (Dublin), LL.M. (Yale). Barrister at-law, Legal Assistant to the Law Reform Commission. Denis Greene, Solicitor, practising in Dulbin. my own position clear. The Lawyer's Identity

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