How to Choose a Law School

What law school should you go to? Let's take the case of the average student. His family is going to finance his schooling- if not entirely, at least in a major part. Where should this student "take" his law? Near home or elsewhere?



First of all, you must cut your suit out of the cloth you have. There's no sense in talking about going far away to what is called a "national" school if it is all you can do to scrape up enough to go to the State college. Yet, sometimes you have a choice. If you scraped a little harder (or perhaps if you worked part time) you could conceivably manage the national school.

How hard should you try? How much real difference is there between the schools?

There are several things to consider, some of them directly related to the law, others not. First of all, how and where are you going to practice? Are you going to practice in a small county-seat town or in a local big city or in a metropolis? And do you want to work for a large corporation or with government? These things have a direct bearing upon your choice, as we shall see.

There are two great categories of schools, made up of the "local" schools and "national" schools. To define each in a sentence or two is impossible. No single characteristic, or two or three characteristics, will serve the purpose. The national school is usually a large school, but this is not an infallible test because some local schools are larger than some of the national schools.
 
Identification with the Eastern seaboard is no greater help because some national schools aren't there. For our purposes we shall say that the law school at your State university is a local law school, though right away we would have to concede that this is not always true. The Law School of the University of Michigan, for instance, has been a national school for many years. If there's any question in your mind as to whether a nearby school should be classified as local or national, just ask the president of your local bar association. He will know.

Though it is not generally understood among lawyers, it is actually true that both the local school and the national school teach the same law, use the same casebooks, and generally the same teaching methods and materials. There is, however, this difference, among others: At the local schools the professors teach more subjects than their counterparts at the national schools, and hence may be expected to be less expert in all of their several fields of instruction than the professor who specializes in only a couple of subjects. Yet we have many instances where professors at the local schools are recognized nationally as experts in a certain field and who, indeed, have refused offers to join the faculties of the larger schools. Why?
 
Because of intangibles hard to describe but easy to recognize when you see them. The good local school has two characteristics unique to it, and not shared by national schools, one internal and the other external. Internally, the faculty and the students are close. Everyone knows everyone else. The professors are more approachable and the student-teacher relation ship is more personal, enriching the lives of both. You can talk things over more readily.

Of course, there's always the faculty character which gives class work a lick and a promise in order to rush back to his office and write himself into a better job, but that selfishness is not peculiar to any school, or, indeed, to any walk of life.

Local school

Externally, also, there is a difference. The local school is closer to the local bench and bar. Many of the lawyers in the State have come from the local school, and they maintain close and sometimes affectionate ties with it. A student who does well in the school carries a certain reputation with him into practice. In the summertime it is not unusual for students to work (as a sort of apprentice) in one of the local law offices, and thus the law-school life of the student merges somewhat with his professional career. The faculty, moreover, will take part in local bar activities, and, conversely, local bar leaders will lecture occasionally at the school, may even take a class or two.

So, from the standpoint of law learned, and how it is learned (we are not speaking now of specialized research), a good local school would probably adequately meet your needs. On the other hand, it is true, undoubtedly, that many of the large metropolitan firms will hire only from the national schools.(They do make exceptions, but it is not wise to plan your career on exceptions.) Moreover, graduation from one of the national schools carries its own unique recommendation merely because of having graduated from an institution of eminence.

If, in addition, you have done outstanding work in the school, if you have made an honorary society, or have served on the board of editors of the legal periodical published by the school (usually called the Law Review), you will have many doors of employment opened to you that are closed to others.

Do not, then, discount the local school merely because it is local. It may be just what you require. Talk with lawyer friends about it. If you have no lawyer friends, make some.

Have the leading lawyers of your State gone to the local school (or schools) or have they gone elsewhere? How about the younger crop of attorneys? Have they found it necessary, or desirable, to leave the area for their legal education? Perhaps the local school has changed since the older lawyers, the lead ers of the bar, graduated. There have, in truth, been vast changes in the local schools in the past quarter-century. More and more have many of them become excellent schools of law, completely adequate to their task of giving professional training to their students. Don't go far afield until you're sure that the local product is not good enough.

After you have made your selection of a school, the next question to answer is whether the law school of your choice will admit you. That will depend upon whether or not you meet their admission requirements. Requirements for different law schools differ. Some require not less than two years of college, others require three, and still others a college degree.

Just to be specific, and so you may have an idea of what one of the large national schools requires, here are the requirements for admission to the Law School of the University of Michigan:

Candidates for the First Degrees in Law: Persons eligible for admission to the Law School as candidates for the first degrees in law must be graduates of approved colleges, including engineering colleges, whose scholastic records and other evidences of ability indicate, in the judgment of the Committee on Admissions, a reasonable probability of success in the Law School.

This School will grant the degrees of Bachelor of Law (LL.B.) or Juris Doctor (J.D.). Requirements for these degrees are set forth below.

There is no required list of subjects which must be taken during the years of collegiate work, except for those persons taking ad vantage of the integrated program. A leaflet describing a recommended program of prelaw studies will be furnished on request.

In general, it may be said that the lawyer's range of knowledge should be as broad as it is humanly possible to make it without undue dilution. At the same time a reasonable degree of concentration in such subjects as history, English language and literature, political science, and economics will provide an important background for full appreciation of the law. Because of its importance as a working tool in many phases of law practice, it is especially recommended that prelaw students include in their college program a study of the principles and practices of accounting.

To give you a general idea of the procedure for applying for admission, those below (also of the University of Michigan) are fairly typical of those of the better schools:

Procedure for Applying for Admission

Enrollment Dates. First-year students are admitted to the Law School in June and in September. From 75 to 100 students are admitted to begin in June and from 200 to 300 more are admitted to begin in September each year. Law students who begin in June frequently do so in order to accelerate their graduation, since three summer sessions count as the equivalent of two semesters, and the student beginning in June may, by continuous attendance thereafter, graduate at the end of his third summer session or in approximately two and one-third calendar years.

Filing of Application and Selection of Students

Applications should be filed sometime during the year preceding the anticipated date of enrollment. Applications for admission in June must be filed before May 15. Applications for admission in September must be filed before July 15. The policy of the Committee on Admissions is to act on applications upon receipt of (i) a transcript showing all, or all but the final semester, of the applicant's college record, (2) two letters of recommendation from college instructors, and (3) the results of the Law School Admission Test (see below). Accordingly, students are advised to submit their applications early in the final college semester. In making selections the basic criterion is the judgment of the Admissions Officer as to the likelihood that the applicant will be successful in Law School and at the bar. One aim of the School is to have a student body representing every section of the country. Thus the 949 students in attendance in 1958-59 represented 202 colleges and 64 different states, territories, and countries.

Law School Admission Test, Each applicant for admission is expected to take the Law School Admission Test given by the Educational Testing Service, 20 Nassau Street, Princeton, New Jersey. This test is given four times each year at one hundred or more examination centers situated throughout the country, including The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The fee is $10.

The test is required by many of the leading law schools, and the scores will be reported on request of the applicant to each of several schools without extra charge. Under special circumstances and in cases of hardship, the requirement of the test may be waived on application to the Admissions Officer of the Law School.

Application blanks and information concerning the time and place of holding the examination may be obtained from the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey, or from either the Law School or the Bureau of Psychological Services of The University of Michigan.

Medical Examination Report, Students who are accepted for admission to the Law School are required, after notice of acceptance, to submit to the University Health Service a medical examination report by a physician of the student's choice. This report shall be submitted on a form supplied at the time the student is notified of his admission to the Law School. No student will be allowed to register in the Law School until the medical examination report has been approved by the University Health Service.

Any student who has attended The University of Michigan is excluded from this examination. All new students and returning students who have been absent from the University for one semester or more will be required to have a chest X-ray at the Health Service during registration.

Application Fee and Acceptance Deposit

Applications for admission to the Law School must be accompanied by an application fee of $5.00 which will not be returned.

Each applicant who is accepted for admission to the first-year class is required to pay to the University a deposit of $50.00 within thirty days after receiving notice of his acceptance. The deposit will be refunded to the applicant following registration. Such deposit will not be refunded for any reason should the applicant fail to register, except when registration is prevented by his entry into the military service of the United States.

The above, however, may not be at all what the school of your choice requires. Better you write directly to the school and obtain its particular requirements and procedures for admission.

What y You Study in Law School

By the time you get to law school itself (after these courses in political science and economics and all the rest) you may believe that there's not much left to learn. Well, it is doubtless true that you will have received the fundamentals of a liberal education, but such an education would be equally useful for anyone at all, say for a doctor. What you will have, really, is background, and a measure of understanding of people's problems. You are now approaching the technical, professional learning of the lawyer.

The law has developed a series of principles to be applied in various transactions. It has been found convenient, and helpful to the study of law, and its practice, to lump together those dealing with roughly similar transactions, such as contracts or crimes or corporations. (As you can imagine, there's much overlap here. It's impossible to draw a sharp line of demarcation between different subjects, and we shouldn't try too hard.)

This is the way law is taught today, in these lumps, contracts, crimes, corporations, and what not. The curriculum of the law school comprises a number of these subjects. Some are basic. All students must take them whether they want to or not. Most of these come in the first year. Others are elective.

The basic courses are prescribed for you. In most law schools today the basic first-year courses, requirements for all students, are relatively few in number. You will be interested in looking at some of these basic courses for a few minutes. For instance, there is a course dealing with people who agree with each other to do things. It is usually called "contracts." If one does not do what he promised to do, many questions arise. Before opting for the course you must know what that course deals and where will it take you.

There are some very complex problems of human relationships, characteristics, and normal expectations here. They are not solvable by rules of thumb. These are problems you meet in law school.

Private wrongs

Another is the course in "torts." This is a tremendously large area. The subject of "torts" deals with what are called "private" wrongs, situations in which one person harms an other. (If the harm is to the public it is called a "crime." They are closely related. In fact, sometimes an act is both a tort and a crime.)

In this field of torts we find, also, the standards of conduct relating to care in the use of things, such as automobiles and airplanes. These, as we have seen, are called "negligence" cases (meaning the cases arise because of negligent or careless conduct). Also such things as slander and libel, assault and battery, and on and on. Standards, you will learn, change with time and people and conditions. One of the hardest jobs you'll have will be to decide whether the older standards of conduct are applicable to your case today.

Something else is very important, too, a basic study for law students. We have always assumed that going to court was a fairly simple matter, like going to church. Unfortunately, this is not so. There are, actually, many kinds of courts, and there are many ways of getting into these courts.

For instance, would you go to the same court to get a divorce as you would to have distributed the estate of a deceased person? No. What kind of remedy would you seek (this bears upon "how" you get into court) if a child were denied admission to school? Obviously, money damages don't interest you here. What the child needs is education. Whom would you sue? The mayor ? No. What form of action would you employ? Probably what is called mandamus. Its meaning is related to that of the word "mandate," or command. You would seek a judicial command, or mandate, to let the child in the school.

Not only does this kind of question arise as to the courts within your own State, but don't forget that owing to our governmental structure in this country, we have, also, a system of Federal courts. What is their relation to the State courts? Can you go into a Federal court instead of a State court simply because you want to? No. How about transferring a case from the State court to a Federal court? Some times you can.

On the same topic, very puzzling questions occasionally arise as to just what State to sue in. Suppose your client lives in New York but while on vacation in Florida has an accident with a car owned and driven by a resident of Wyoming.

Where will he sue? New York? Florida? Wyoming? Suppose he has to sue in Wyoming and you go out to try the case. (Better take local counsel with you, by the way, unless you know Wyoming law and procedure.) What law will the court apply? In other words, what standard of conduct that we just talked about? That of Florida, where the accident occurred? Or of Wyoming, the State licensing the driver to go out on the highway?

These, and such questions, are covered in another basic course. It has different names in different schools. What it deals with are matters of the "procedures" used with respect to cases and of the kinds of cases handled by the courts, called their "jurisdiction." As you can see, these are highly technical matters peculiar to the law. You will get no answers to them in your prelaw work, no matter how extensive, but you will get an insight into the social conditions (in the broadest sense) out of which the different courts arose. Some of the doctrines applied by some courts today go right back to the English ecclesiastical courts, which were the products of their time and conditions. Moreover, the delicacy of the Federal-State relationship has a great deal to do with the refusal of the Federal courts to accept cases they might otherwise hear. In other words, is it good government for the Federal authorities to get involved in purely State problems? Perhaps it cannot be avoided in some cases, such as, for instance, when the governor of a great State told the people there, during the war, not to pay any attention to gasoline rationing because the State had plentiful supplies of gasoline. (Actually, the use of gasoline was curtailed to save rubber as well as gas. We just didn't have any rubber.) In such cases the Federal government cannot avoid "interfering," but there are other matters of purely local character where the States ought to be left alone, to work out their own problems in their own ways. As always, technical rules of law and procedure trace right back to the customs and habits of people and the societies in which they live.

Legal attributes

Another basic course is that in property. Here you study, primarily, not the actions of people but the legal attributes of things. Of course, many of the actions of people are taken with relation to things, so it all sounds a bit confusing, but look at it this way: Consider, again, the automobile accident. The law relating to what the people did (speeding, driving on the wrong side of the road, and so on) involves the law of torts, but we might be interested in the thing itself, the automobile. For example, who owned it? Was there a "lien" on it held by some finance company? Here our questions involve what is called the "law of property."

The law of property itself has two great subdivisions, incidentally, one dealing with land, the other with movables of various kinds, such as your watch or your car or even such intangible things as the "rights" a person has because of the stocks and bonds he owns. In your course in real property you will learn the law relating to land, how to convey it, either in whole or in part, how to lease it, what an owner's rights are with respect to it, and similar matters. (We looked at some of them before, you will remember, when we spoke of the right to exclude people called trespassers.) Personal property, as we noted, relates to property other than real estate. In that course you will learn about some very fundamental concepts in the law. For example, what does "possession" really mean? As to the pen in your pocket, that's easy. But how about an old wreck in the ocean, forty fathoms beneath the surface of the sea? Those things, also, are capable of possession, just as is a railroad locomotive, but it is not the same as ownership. What does possession really mean?

We haven't exhausted the list of basics yet (others are usually constitutional law, and evidence, sometimes trusts and estates), but they differ with different schools. The point is that regardless of the names by which they are known, they comprise topics a lawyer must have as a foundation for any kind of practice or any kind of specialty. Furthermore-and this is important-the basic courses impart not only certain information (for example, a deed to land is the way to convey title to real estate) but other things as well. These other matters are often of greater importance to you than specific items of information, like that last golden nugget about the deed, which you could have got from a fifty-cent primer on law. What, then, are these other things you get, more important than the rule of law? The real value of these courses lies in the fact that they teach you what is usually described as "how to think like a lawyer." What in the world does that mean? Well, that's a bit complex.

Here is what it means, in general: First of all, with respect to the problem presented, to be able to see it not as a unique local incident, unrelated to the past or future, divorced from any considerations of social policy, but as a part of the pattern of the adjustment of people to each other in today's society.

Next, professional technical skills must be brought to bear on the problem. The controlling legal issues in the case must be identified by a painstaking analysis of the facts and circumstances presented.

Case is like a tree

A case is something like a tree. It has a trunk and large branches, and the large branches have smaller branches, and so on. Then, having isolated the controlling issue, a lawyer must be able to ascertain the really significant facts bearing on that issue.

This marshaling of the facts, separating the wheat from the chaff, the material from the immaterial, the relevant from the irrelevant, requires real skill, and its accomplishment is one of the hallmarks of a successful lawyer. It is an utter joy to hear a skilled attorney, after sometimes weeks of trial, approach the bench and in a few paragraphs slice through all of the irrelevant topics, the hazy side issues, and go right to the heart of the matter as swiftly and surely as an arrow seeking the target. The late John W. Davis, one of America's great lawyers, once described this as "going to the jugular." The phrase is apt and accurate. But it requires a skill and application and technique of reasoning that are acquired only by painstaking study and persistent work.

With all of this accomplished, however, the law student, or the lawyer, has merely a pyramid without an apex. The great question still remains: What should the decision be? In other words, what will "the law" hold as to this? That is what your client wants to know and that is what you must be prepared to tell him. You are consulted because, conceding all this knowledge, you know something else as well: What a court will rule on these facts.

How in the world will you be able to predict this? There is no simple answer to this question. This is the final test of the lawyer's skill, the end result of all his work, his study, and his learning. We can only say that he will make his prediction on the basis of his professional judgment, and it is his personal problem (yours, if you are the lawyer) to see that that judgment rests upon a broad and solid foundation.

Thinking like a lawyer

"Thinking like a lawyer" is a shorthand expression. It sums up many things. It involves the recognition of the human problem and its place in our society, an isolation of the legal issue, a marshaling of the facts relating to that issue, and a bringing to bear upon that issue the applicable law, utilizing both of our old friends, precedent and analogy.

We mustn't ever lose sight of the fact that a great deal of specific information (rules of law) must be learned in the law school. It is all very well to emphasize your acquisition of skills in communicating, in analyzing problems, and so forth, but the same things are important, also, to other professions, such as to naval officers. Yet we would never go to the naval officer for legal advice.

The point is that the skills summed up in the shorthand expression "thinking like a lawyer" are acquired within the frame work of the law itself, and are exercised with reference to the rules and concepts of law, not seamanship or medicine or engineering. This requires a comprehensive knowledge of rules of law as such. Otherwise we have nothing to work with.

The study of law in law school is done in a way you will find new and strange to you. To give you an idea of the process normally employed in a good school (local or national) let's go back to one of the basic first-year (law-school freshman) courses in contracts. How does a student go about learning contracts?

First of all, he studies from what is called a "casebook." This is not a textbook. Nor is it a series of printed lectures about cases. It actually is a book full of opinions "handed down" in actually litigated cases. The opinions in the cases are printed one after another. First, the facts are given, sometimes boiled down by the casebook editors, for judges are apt to be a bit windy in their opinions, and a little too full of "whereases" and "aforesaids" for first-year students of the law. Following the facts, the opinion of the judge is printed verbatim on the particular point the editor is using the case to illustrate. At the close of the case the modern casebook editor may ask some questions about the case, comment on it, or note briefly other cases that the student may compare with it.

When you come to class the professor will usually take up these cases one after another. Usually he will call upon some student to "state" the case. This means that the student must briefly state the facts and the "holding" (meaning what the judge decided), together with a summary of the reasons there for. (This boiling down of a long case into a few well-chosen words is an art in itself, one hard to acquire and immensely valuable to you. You will be able to buy ready-made summaries of the cases in the leading case books you will use. Go ahead, if you want to. It's your race, not the professor's.)

After the student's statement the questions will start. What do you think of the opinion? Why? What have you learned? A rule of law from the case? Probably, but that's not all, nor is it of the first importance, for, really, there aren't any hard and fast "rules." There are always exceptions. What you are in the process of learning is how to "think like a lawyer," to analyze situations, to marshal facts, to weigh different factors, to reach a sound conclusion, and, finally, to support it with all the skill at your command.

Yet, in addition,a lawyer must have a large stock of legal rules and principles at his fingertips when he steps out into practice, and the "case method" (of studying law by studying the actual cases) is an awfully slow way of acquiring this fund of information. You have to read many pages, sometimes, to get a rule of law applicable to a given fact situation, and while this is fine for developing your analytical skills it is a wasteful and time-consuming way of gathering the specific information you will need in practice. In addition, the case in the casebook is finished and complete. The facts have been carefully culled. How about giving you the raw materials (all the facts, other cases, statutes, and so forth) and letting you try your hand at constructing a case? Good idea. So, nowadays, the leading schools do not rely solely upon case books for teaching. They use problems, discussion groups, draftsmanship courses, and similar devices. It's an exciting experience.

How about marks? Marks aren't important but, rather, that it is what you learn that counts. Certainly what you learn is fundamental to the practice of your profession, but marks are important, very important. In the first place, in the average law school those with the highest marks "make" the board of editors of the school's law review. This is the legal periodical published by most of the top-notch schools. It is composed of leading articles on legal topics by distinguished authors, and of student notes and comments. In these latter the students subject current decisions in the courts to searching analysis and criticism, pointing out, at times, their shortcomings in reasoning or precedent. These comments, no less than the featured articles, are of immense help to the modern jurist. The flood of cases has become so great that it is almost impossible to keep up with the mere reading of them, to say nothing of arranging them in any kind of logical or orderly sequence. Today it is to the law reviews, as well as the treatises, that the judges look for this kind of synthesis of the growing law, and the judges often rely, in their opinions, upon law-review materials, student notes and comments as well as the leading articles. The students who undertake these law-review analyses, under the guidance of their professors, not only render a real service to their profession but they themselves, in so doing, are acquiring legal skills that will serve them the rest of their lives.

The law school has one practice you may not have encountered in your undergraduate work. In law school you don't get daily marks, nor do you have weekly or monthly exams. You do have (at least the freshmen do) some "preliminary" exams, but they don't count on your final grade. In fact, often they are not even graded by the professors but by assistants.

They are intended as warm-ups, the preliminaries before the main event. You can get an idea from them how you are getting along in your work, how your reasoning and analytical skills are progressing, whether you are learning or not, in comparison with your classmates.

The big exam

But your grade for each entire course in law school will depend upon just one long examination at the end of the course. Does this sound rough? It is. But consider this: Whether or not you are ever admitted to the practice of the law, also, will depend upon just one big examination (the bar exams) at the end of your whole law-school course. And go one step more: eventually you will have the first big case of your whole career docketed in the Supreme Court of your State. Whether you win it or lose it is going to depend upon your writing another examination (called a "brief") upon the questions presented in that case. Your life as a lawyer, in other words, from neophyte to elder, will depend upon your success in a series of critical examinations. You might as well start learning how to accept that responsibility, and how to discharge it (that is, how to write the exams) early in your legal life. And you do.

Here you see spotlighted the importance of learning to put your thoughts into words. Because it makes no difference how much law you know, if you can't express it you can't pass the examination, either in law school or for the bar itself. Re member a while back when we spoke of the need for you to learn to communicate? Here it is again in its most demanding form. If you can't communicate you can't pass. It's just as simple as that. This is an actual example from a bar examination answer in New York: "Dying declarations are admissible if the declarant is dead at the time he made the declaration."

Here's what this is all about: Courts do not ordinarily receive what is called "hearsay" testimony. That is, they do not permit you to take the witness stand and testify, against a defendant, that "Bill said the defendant hit him first." Maybe Bill did say this and maybe it is of importance, on some issue, whether the defendant actually did hit him first. But the way to prove it is to put Bill on the stand. Then he can be cross-examined about his statement. The credibility of his story may be tested by searching questions.

But there are many exceptions to this rule of evidence, and evidently the New York bar examiners were asking about what is called the dying-declaration exception. That exception runs something like this: If a man knows he is about to die, and makes a relevant statement about an issue in the case, his statement will be received in evidence through the testimony of the person who heard it said. Why? For two principal reasons.

In the first place, most people feel that one who knows he is about to die will probably tell the truth. The awful solemnity of the moment, it is felt, furnishes a circumstantial guaranty of trustworthiness. Moreover, there is a real necessity to take the evidence from the hearsay source, despite its dangers, for the speaker is no longer alive.

But what the student said was just ridiculous. We will grant that he was under pressure when he wrote. But it is just at the time we are under pressure that we must rely on habits of thought and habits of speech we have acquired in situations less demanding. Train yourself, again and again, in habits of clear speech and clear writing,

This may come as a distinct shock to you: The law-school examination period should be the easiest time of your life. Why? Aren't exam times traditionally the times for the long hours of cramming, the all-night sessions with black coffee and some wise guy's notes? Yes, they are, "traditionally." But those days are over. You are not interested in fooling a teacher into thinking you know the law, but, rather, in actually knowing it. Now you are in the law school. You are learning your profession. If you are actually learning it, you acquire some knowledge every day. At the end of the week, in each course, you will gather up the loose ends, put things together, add up the score, so to speak. You will write out in your own words "the law" you have learned. (Law students call this their "outline.") This becomes your own textbook on the law, say, of contracts. It is far more valuable to you than any book you can buy. You wrote it. Every line of law in it you can back up with the reported cases from your casebook.

When you write, for instance, that damages for pain and suffering are not ordinarily recoverable for breach of contract (for failure to deliver on time the new suit you ordered) you will put in parentheses after the statement, or in a footnote, something like this: ''{Smith v. Jones? tailor-made suit)." There you learned not only the rule of law, but the reasons behind it, the history of the rule.

Week after week this work continues, in each of your courses. When you get to the end, there's your completed text, all ten chapters of it, one for each week (or topic) of the course. There's nothing for you to cram into your head any more than there is the night before you see an important client.

The knowledge is already there, the knowledge basic to your profession. It has become (if you've properly done your work) a part of the mental furnishings with which you live, like your street address, like the name of your State capitol, like multiplication and long division. Oh, you will read over your outlines before the exam, but it will be merely a refreshing of memory, not a "learning" (merely until the exam is over) of elementary legal rules.

Undergraduate schools

As for what are called in undergraduate schools "extra curricular activities," the law student simply doesn't have the time for them. His studies leave no time to spare. There is one activity, however, which, while not extracurricular in the undergraduate sense of the word, is outside the classroom work, yet the student should participate actively in it. This is what is called the "Case Club." As this is usually conducted, the students form themselves into clubs (often bearing the names of great jurists, such as the Brandeis Club or the Holmes Club or the Cooley Club) and the clubs into teams. Each team consists of two students. The older students, who are in charge of the clubs, then assign a legal topic to two teams for argument. One team takes the affirmative of the question and the other the negative. This sounds like undergraduate debating, and, indeed, there are similarities, but only to the degree that an argument before the Supreme Court is a debate. The appellate argument (which the Case Club simulates) is a strictly legal controversy, and the argument turns upon the record before the court, the applicable legal principles, and the decided cases. Until the finals are reached the older stu dents act as the judges.

The finals themselves, however, are another matter. They are occasions of real law-school significance. The "bench" deciding the case is usually a distinguished one, Justices from the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of the State frequently participating. The winning team lawyer sometimes receives a substantial monetary, or other, reward.

In the audience hearing the argument, moreover, are usually found the leaders of the bar of the locality, and it is not unknown that an able case-club participant will receive offers of association in practice from this activity alone. The greatest reward, however, is none of these. It is in learning to think on your feet, to speak persuasively and effectively to an audience, and to feel at home in public debate. These skills are in valuable to the exercise of your profession, as we have seen.

Professional competence

If you have done well your pre-legal task of learning words and their effective use, the law-school work will add the professional competence so necessary to the lawyer. But if you come to the case-club work halting in speech and poverty-stricken in your choice of words, you will be handicapped from the outset.

In general, this is what law-school life is like for the average student. But there are, as well, special cases. If, for instance, a young man wants to study law, but he's married and has a family and a full-time job, he is very restricted in his choice of law schools if, indeed, he has any choice. About all he can do is to go to a night school of law, if one is available in his com munity, or take a correspondence course.* Should one in such position, lacking other resources, attempt the study of law? I don't know. Many factors are involved. These problem cases are so perplexing, and so demanding, that each is a special case.

There are no hard and fast rules. It all depends upon the individual. We should not even try to enunciate hard and fast rules for all people.

Perhaps you have noticed that the work in law school and your professional life are merging into each other. The study of cases, law-review work, case- club competitions, and classroom analyses are no longer divorced from your personal life, as some undergraduate courses seem to be. Now it's for real. As a matter of fact it's so real, so important, that some of the large firms will hire only the top-ranking students, and I have known cases where they were hired sight unseen. If you're not a top-ranker, how ever, don't be discouraged. There are pros and cons to working with a big firm, as we shall see. The point to be stressed right now is that the true professional school is the anteroom of the profession itself.

This, then, is the law school. You come to it with a liberal education. You leave it a member of one of the honored professions. Your opportunities are bounded only by limitations of your imagination --the White House, the United States Supreme Court or the Congress? Reach. All you need to do is to reach, and grasp. If you have built well, the foundation you stand on will be broad and strong.