THE ARTICLED CLERK'S HAND-BOOK. PART I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. To become an Attorney and Solicitor is not now an easy matter. Before this can be accomplished no less than three examinations must be successfully passed. One in general knowledge, prior to entering into articles of clerkship, termed the "Preliminary Examination"; another in law, when half the period of pupilage has passed, called "The Intermediate Examination"; and the last or "Final Examination," at the expiration of the clerkship. It will readily be admitted, therefore, that the articled clerk, embryo or actual, requires some guide, some assistance, in his course of study, which we may at once remark must be methodical and thoughtful. It cannot," says Mr. Warren, (a) "be too frequently impressed upon the student that with method he may do everything, without it he can do nothing, in legal studies." No study tries the memory like the study of the law. Let, therefore, every one who determines to enter the law commence with a firm resolution of overcoming every difficulty. 66 "No profession," says Mr. Warren, so severely tries the TEMPER as that of the law. . . . The young student is perpetually called upon to exercise calmness and patience, though fretted by the most provoking difficulties and interruptions. He is apt to feel in a manner enraged, disgusted, dispirited, when he finds from time to time how much he has utterly forgotten that he had most thoroughly learned; and the increasing difficulties of acquiring legal knowledge and turning it to practical account : all this, moreover, not in abstract speculative studies, but in those which he must promptly master, because his livelihood is at stake, his whole future lifetime is to be occupied in them. Do all that he can; strain his faculties to the uttermost, approach his subject by never so many different ways, and in all moods of mind, he will nevertheless be sometimes baffled after all; and on being assisted by his tutor, or possibly, even by some junior fellow student, be confounded to think that so obvious a clue as he is then supplied with, could have escaped him. How often has the poor (a) Warren's Law Studies, p. 795, 2nd edit. B student on these occasions banged his books about, and shutting them up, with perhaps a curse, rushed out of chambers in despair. How apt is the recurrence of such mortifications to beget a peevish, irritable, desponding humour, which disgusts the victim of an ill-regulated temper, with himself, his profession, and everybody about him. Now let him from the first calculate on the occurrence of such obstacles, that so he may rather overcome them than suffer them thus to overcome him. True, legal studies are difficult, often apparently insurmountable; but what of that? DIFFICULTY is a friend; the best friend of the student, not his enemy— his bugbear."(a) Let not, therefore, the youth who has not at least some taste for the profession of the law enter its portals; for to such it will be a dry and uninviting labour; for even its most zealous votaries find its first approaches difficult and toilsome, but afterwards comparatively smooth and easy. But those who enter the profession with a liking for it, and also as a means of gaining a livelihood, must come prepared to walk its paths with integrity and without corruption, and to diligently study that profession; "for," says the late Mr. Sidney Smith, "some of the greatest and most important interests of the world are committed to your care; you are our protectors against the encroachment of power; you are the preservers of freedom, the defenders of weakness, the unravellers of cunning, the investigators of artifice, the humblers of pride, and the scourgers of oppression. When you are silent the sword leaps from its scabbard, and nations are given up to the madness of internal strife." And Mr. Justice Coleridge, in his address to the bar on his retirement from the bench, says: "... So long as England is enterprising, rich, and free, the law must exercise a prominent influence." How much, then, is there to cause all who enter the legal profession to be scrupulously honourable in their conduct; and to acquire a thorough knowledge of their profession, so that the characters, the wealth, and the well-being of those who have trusted in their honour and knowledge may not suffer. 66 It is to be lamented that the articled clerk is too often left without any guide or instructor. In most instances he comes into an office raw from school, or perhaps from one of the universities, and is allowed to stagger through his clerkship in a complete fog; at most, perhaps, he has an old copy of Blackstone or Coke upon Littleton, which has mouldered on his principal's bookshelves for years, put into his hands, with injunctions to study it with diligence, and if he should do so, will in course of time make the important and mortifying discovery that more than half of it is obsolete, and must be dismissed from his memory. Mr. Warren forcibly illustrates the danger and injury arising from thus reading a book without being previously instructed by some competent person as to the propriety of so doing. He thus narrates the facts which happened to a friend of his own: "On quitting college he set himself down to a year's solitary and 'hard' reading: devoting special attention upon the second volume of Blackstone's Commentaries, and the corresponding portions of Coke upon Littleton. Conceiving it to be of the utmost importance to become accurately acquainted with the old tenures, he almost committed to memory all those portions of the work in question which related to that subject perpetually exercising himself in the law of Knight's Service, Homage, Fealty, Escuage, Wardship, Escheat, Lineal and Collateral Warranty, and so forth: and you may conceive,' says he, 'my mortifi (a) Warren's Law Studies, pp. 108, 109, 2nd edit. cation on discovering how completely my labour had been lost, though I certainly acquired in the same time some valuable knowledge of parts of real property law now too generally neglected.' Another friend had thus 'read up' with great care a particular head of commercial law, and completely mastered all the fine-drawn distinctions to be found in the cases cited in the book which he had been reading. Almost the first thing that befel him on entering chambers [of a pleader] was his confidential intimation to a fellow pupil of the feat which he had performed. Ah, my friend,' he replied, have you never heard of such and such a statute? Thank heaven, it's given the coup-de-grâce to all that nonsense!' "(a) But to resume our more immediate subject, the articled clerk is, in a great many offices, made to do as much copying as can be got out of him, and even to run mere errands, quite unconnected with the office. In fact, he is made to do the duties of an office boy, instead of being treated by his master as a pupil from whom he has taken a large fee and expressly covenanted to teach and instruct in the "practice or profession of an attorney-at-law and solicitor in chancery." It cannot then be wondered at that the articled clerk turns from the law, as presented to him, with loathing and disgust, and pursues with ardour the congenial and exciting sports of cricket, boating, or hunting, or perhaps worse, flies to the exciting pleasures of cards or billiards, to the entire neglect of his studies and the duties of the office. For these reasons a contest at this period of the clerkship generally takes place between the principal and clerk; if the principal prevails, and the clerk is still used as a mere machine for the principal's benefit, he becomes an unthinking plodder; if the clerk succeeds in throwing off all restraint, and refuses to continue the drudgery set before him, he becomes a thorough idler, and loses all taste for business. Would it not, then, be better and more just for a solicitor to refuse an articled clerk and the premium paid for the supposed instruction, if that solicitor is, either from being too much engaged in his practice, or from being himself too ignorant, unable to give proper instruction to one whom he binds himself so to do? But should the articled clerk, as is too probable, be placed under the guidance of such a master, he will soon become acquainted with the fact, and he should then determine to overcome the difficulties that present themselves, by industry and attention, and by seeking the information he desires from other sources, which is denied by one who ought to give it. "Biography," says Mr. Wright, "will teach him that many, with perhaps more disadvantages than he has to encounter, have attained the highest eminence. Saunders was a beggar-boy, taught to write by attorneys' clerks in the Temple, and after serving a clerkship, and practising with success at the bar, he was made a Chief Justice, and has left behind him some of the best reports extant. Lord Hardwicke, Lord Somers, Sir John Strange, Lord Kenyon, and Lord Ashburton, arrived at the highest judicial situations, though they were attorneys' clerks."(b) And we have several men now living who have risen from the lowest ranks of the profession to the highest. At the Intermediate Examination formerly distinction was given to those candidates under the age of twenty-six who answered better than others, but this has been discontinued. At the Final Examination prizes (a) Warren's Law Studies, p. 670, 2nd edit. (b) Wright's Advice on the Study of the Law, p. 11. |