How to Study Law

From the discussion of the chief elements that enter into the work of the lawyer, in whatever branch of the profession he may be employed, the prospective law student may infer in a general way what college studies and training will be of most value in preparation for the practice of law. A brief description of the work of the modern law student will throw additional light on the matter and perhaps modify his first impressions.




In the law schools, textbooks, if not entirely taboo, are at least of very subordinate importance. From his very first day the law student works with the very same material that he will use all his life as a lawyer-the reported decisions of the courts and other tribunals, and constitutions, legislation, regulations, and ordinances. From his first day on he will use source material rather than somebody's statements about those sources.

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Each reported case he studies will give him the facts of the case, the contentions of the rival parties, the issue between the parties as developed in their contending statements or pleadings, the decision of the court on the issue, and the reasons assigned by the court for the decision. Involuntarily his reasoning powers are called into play: Is the decision right? Is the reason for the decision sound? He compares it with another case which seems to enunciate an opposite ruling. Are the two decisions really contradictory? Or can they be reconciled? Similar queries suggest themselves as to the reasons assigned by the courts for the decisions. The instructor's first question is likely to be, "Do you agree with the case? Is the decision right?" The student is then face to face with the very same question which confronts a judge in every case that comes before him with all of its practical, legal and ethical implications. The instructor, in due time, may put to the class a hypothetical case and ask for a student's opinion on it. Or he may change a single fact in a case, and then ask if the change alters the decision, in the student's opinion. Judges have a way of bringing into a case, statements of law that have no application to the issue in hand. In this process of reading a case and discussing the opinion of the court, the law student is dealing with the specific facts of the case, with the people therein, with the rule of law applicable thereto, with the environment of the case, and throughout with language-the five factors in a lawyer's work. It is all as real as life itself. It is contentious. The attitude is one of "show me." No authority is too high to be questioned.

Highest among the factors with which the lawyer constantly works, we must place reasoning-not mere logic, but reasoning based on experience, what the great Lord Coke termed "the artificial reason and judgment of the law."'

Education in which reasoning predominates is nothing new. It is as old as Socrates and it is described by Plato in the Republic:

Education is not at all what certain of its professors declare it to be. They tell us they put Knowledge into an empty soul, as though one should put sight into blind eyes. Our theory is quite another kind. [There is] this faculty of Reason present in every human soul, this organ wherewith each man learns. . . . Education is therefore the art of converting the Reason.

The reason is "converted" not by lectures or books but by informal discussion provoked by the instructor's questions. This way of teaching in which thinking is emphasized over mere learning owes its renaissance in American legal education to the wisdom of a great educational innovator. President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, in sensing the weakness of lectures and textbooks in training real lawyers and in seeking out Christopher Columbus Langdell as Dean of the Law School. To Langdell we owe the case system of studying law. He combined the study of original sources (the method of modern science) with the Socratic tradition of question and answer. The combination is an ideal one from the standpoint of developing the legal ability of the student. Each case involves at least one question which has to be answered, and the student is obliged to compare his answer with the court's or his fellow student's, or the instructor's solution of the problem.

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The student's approach to the study of his cases is that of the judge rather than that of the attorney. The judge strives for impartiality and the truth as between the contending parties. First he has to decide, in many cases where there is no jury, as between the rival contentions of the parties, what the facts of the case actually are. This is by no means an easy task in the face of conflicting testimony from witnesses of varying degrees of credibility. In dealing with facts, the more he knows of life and human nature, of the arts and sciences, the better; and the greater his skill in acquiring knowledge and marshalling facts, as a general assembles and arranges his army, the better his legal work. This ability to grasp and master facts is a prime requisite of the law student, the lawyer, and the judge.

Next the judge has to weigh the conflicting views of the parties as to the law. Here he is frequently referred by counsel to what appear to be divergent decisions. Often they are not so in fact. If they are not, he must carefully distinguish them. When the decisions actually are in conflict, he must decide which ones are sound in principle and wise in practice. To do this he must know not only the single pertinent rule of law, but its correlated rules and their controlling principles. The law student must follow the same process. By patient research and much discussion he extracts from the cases the rules and principles of law and welds them into a harmonious whole in his own notebook. The more the student knows of history and of his political economic, social, and moral environment, the more likely is his decision to be correct. In short, the more comprehensive the student's grasp of life and of human nature, as well as of the arts and sciences, the more effective will be his work in the law. This statement, we must hasten to add, is subject to two important provisos: First, he must be able to put his knowledge to use practically in his reasoning; and secondly, he must be able to express himself. Without these faculties it would be useless for him to have available encyclopedic information, for the practice of law is nothing if not a practical art.

Enough has been said, however, to emphasize, if emphasis is still necessary, the need of the law school student's having a very wide background of knowledge of life and its arts and sciences; of his being able to use his knowledge, i.e., reason about it; of his being able to express himself adequately; and of his being able to acquire information and marshal it skillfully and speedily. With such a wide background of education, the reading of every case will add to his knowledge of life as well as of law, i.e., will augment his liberal education; without it, his reading of the cases will lose much of its significance. The truth of this statement may readily be tested by any prospective law student.

It is worth repeating that law is an aspect of life and accordingly as broad as life itself. The pace in law school is so fast and the amount of ground to be covered so extensive that it is inescapable that the student who knows how to reason and how to express himself, who knows something of human nature, who understands at least in broad outline his environment-physical, social, and moral-and who knows how to assemble information rapidly and accurately has a great advantage over the student who is deficient in one or another of these particulars. For the well-prepared student, each case he reads is a continuation of his liberal education, for law properly studied by a properly prepared student is just as much liberal education as any subject in the college curriculum. Thus studied and taught, law is worth of a place in a university, but not otherwise.

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