The Philippine Barristers rendered a creditable program on August 13, to commemorate the Occupation Day. The chancellor, Mr. Francisco Africa, delivered the introductory remarks; and Mr. José E. Romero, the young editor of The Rising Philippines, surprised his audience with a historical paradox by arguing that the Filipinos have succeeded in conquering the Americans. The rest of the program, especially the song of Miss Petrona Ramos, was no less interesting. A LAW STUDENT PENSIONED Eulogio Rodriguez, a student of the College of Law, is one of the four young men pensioned by the University of the Philippines to study Library Science in the United States. LEDESMA, A SOLDIER José Ledesma, a member of the Junior Class of the College of Law, received a telegram from his father permitting him to enlist in the National Guard. The dailies of Iloilo are enthusiastic about the news. It is believed that this example will induce other University students to enlist. JUDGE LOBINGIER'S LECTURE On Saturday evening, August 3, Judge Lobingier delivered before the Law Forum an interesting lecture about the United States Court in China. PONG LIANG CHEN AFTER LL. M. Mr. Pon Liang Chen, LL. B., a graduate from the Comparative Law School of Shanghai, is studying in the College of Law. He is after the degree of Master of Laws. Mr. Pon says that in China law graduates are not required to pass a bar examination. PEDRO TAJONERA DEAD Mr. Pedro Tajonera of Paluan, Mindoro, a Junior of the College of Law, committed suicide on August 20 in the Philippine General Hospital. After staying about ten days in the said hospital, suffering from malaria fever, Mr. Tajonera put an end to his earthly sufferings by cutting his throat with a razor. The faculty, his classmates and the whole student body of the College of Law mourn his early passing away. PHILIPPINE LAW JOURNAL Vol. V OCTOBER, 1918 No. 3 A LEGAL CLINIC (The following is a memorandum sent by Dean Jorge Bocobo of the College of Law to the President of the University, recommending the establishment of a Legal Clinic. It is through the force of his arguments as set forth in this memorandum that the Board of Regents approved the recommendation.) UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES COLLEGE OF LAW Manila, August 27, 1918. MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT RE NEED OF A LEGAL CLINIC Pursuant to your instructions, I have the honor to submit this memorandum on the need of a Legal Clinic. General Nature.-The Legal Clinic idea has been adopted, in various forms, in the University of Copenhagen and in the Universities of Minnesota, Northwestern, Harvard, Yale, Tennessee, George Washington and perhaps other institutions of learning. The plan to which the proposed Legal Clinic for the University of the Philippines is most akin is that now being successfully carried out in the University of Minnesota. Dean Wigmore of Northwestern University, who is one of the foremost legal educators and legal reformers in the United States, advocates substantially the same plan as that now before the Board of Regents, for consideration. In fact he intimates the possibility of its establishment by the University of the Philippines. The Legal Clinic is to be under the immediate charge of a member of the permanent faculty, who has had sufficient and adequate practice. The members of the Senior class will be assigned, in groups of three or four, to the Clinic for a period of time, possibly a week or so. The students on duty will not act as mere clerks of the professor in charge, but will be more or less like junior partners in an ordinary law office. They will directly assist throughout the stages of a case, whether it be taken 1 Sce XI Illinois Law Review pp. 591, 595-598; and 27 Harvard Law Review pp. 161-2. 2 For a description of the Minnesota Legal Clinic, and its successful operation, see Handbook of the Association of American Law School and Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting held at Chicago, Illinois, Dec. 28-29, 1916, pp. 150-155. 3 See XII Illinois Law Review, pp. 37-38. to court or comproinised. Credit will be given towards graduation for satisfactory work done in the Clinic, there being no necessity for changing the curriculum, for this work may come under "Practice Court", or "Trial Practice", or "other required work" provided for in the Catalogue. Further particulars are described in my memorandum of April 9, 1918, on this subject. Advantages.-1. The students will have actual practice, thus applying their theoretical knowledge acquired in the class-room to real cases. As Prof. E. M. Morgan of the University of Minnesota says, the Legal Clinic "gives the student a practical demonstration of the law as it is practised". The value and limitations of proof, the credibility of the client and witnesses, the intricacies of practice and pleading, the incidents of a trial, the vitalizing of abstract propositions of substantive law, the discriminating of material from immaterial facts, and numberless other things will be revealed to the student by actual experience. The graduate will thus be able to practice law immediately upon passing the bar examination, without the difficulties usually met with by new practitioners. It might not be inappropriate to add that the Supreme Court, by extending the law course from three to four years and allowing law students to spend the fourth year either in a law school or in a law office, seems to desire that in the last year the practical side of legal instruction be emphasized. It may be said that the Practice Court in the College of Law is enough. While I am not in favor of completely abolishing the Practice Court-for I believe it should be continued in a modified form side by side with the Legal Clinic-yet, inasmuch as the whole proceeding in such a court is a sham, no great benefit is derived therefrom. The medical student is not taught diagnosis and treatment by placing before him a man who is in sound health but is assumed, for the sake of "practice", to have certain symptoms. A sick man is intrusted to his care; our College of Medicine and Surgery assigns students to patients in the General Hospital. Neither does the student in Education-candidate for the high school teacher's certificate-get practice in teaching by conducting a class made up of his classmates who are assumed to be high-school pupils; in our College of Education, there is a University High School. with real high school classes. At this juncture, I might remark that the College of Law is the only professional school of the University which does not furnish actual practice to the students. The medical students have their patients in the General Hospital; the Pharmacy students are trained in the Hospital Dispensary; the Veterinary students have laboratory experience and treat sick animals; the agricultural students work on the college farm; the Engineering students have their shops and 4 See Handbook of the Association of American Law School and Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting held at Chicago, Illinois, Dec. 28-29, 1916, p. 155. 5 See Handbook of the Association of American Law School and Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting held at Chicago, Illinois, Dec. 28-29, 1916, pp. 147-148; XXIII Case and Comment, p. 973; XII Illinois Law Review, p. 37-38. laboratories; the Forestry students do field work in the Maquiling Forest Reserve; and the Education students get their pedagogical training in the University High School. But the College of Law depends upon the artificial moot court. Prof. E. M. Morgan of the University of Minnesota Law School has this to say on the moot or practice court: "The striking defect in the practice court is its want of reality, its lack of the human element. In actual practice the client does not usually seek a lawyer until his affairs are pretty badly tangled; he does not distinguish the material from the immaterial facts; frequently he is uncertain or entirely ignorant as to essential points in his case. A most searching examination of the client, not only as to what he knows or doesn't know in the premises, but also as to the existence and location of persons likely to have any relevant information, is frequently necessary. The client may be a defendant against whom a default judgment has already been entered, or he may otherwise have unwittingly prejudiced his rights. In the practice work, these conditions cannot be reproduced. The student has no responsibility to a real client, no real rights to enforce or to protect; the socalled witnesses are ready to his hand; they are usually able clearly and intelligently to tell their stories, and to distinguish the material from the immaterial.” The conditions just named exist in our moot court. Many of our graduates have informed the undersigned, orally or in writing, that there is need of more practical work in the conduct of cases. This, in spite of their having had moot court work. 2. But if practical training in the application of the substantive as well as the adjective law is important, of greater moment is the inculcation, by actual example and experience, of the high ideals of the legal profession. The subject of Legal Ethics is taught in this college, it is true, but the teaching thereof is done in the classroom and is not drawn from cases which the students actually handle. In reviewing the history of legal education, which has passed from training in a law office to attendance at a law school, Mr. Hampton L. Carson of the Philadelphia Bar, in an address before the American Bar Association in 1914, said that by this change we have lost "to a menacing extent, that which gave tone to the profession. We have lost the old-fashioned preceptor, setting an example of deportment, of dignity, of professional morality, through meeting his clients in the presence of his students, or by talking familiarly to them of the standards set by tradition based upon the conduct of the best and purest in the profession." I believe in the law school method, but there must also be a period of training in a law office, for, as Mr. Carson has said, apprenticeship in a law office furnished opportunities to the pupil of "observing how a high-minded practitioner adhered in letter, in spirit and conduct to his professional oath to act at all times 'with all 6 See Handbook of the Association of American Law School and Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting hald at Chicago, Illinois, Dec. 28-29, 1916, p. 150. 7 Report of the 37th Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, p. 897. due fidelity to the court as well as to the client'." By adopting the proposed plan, therefore, the University creates a powerful instrumentality which will make for the development of character. Mr. William V. Rowe of the New York Bar Association says that in a Legal Clinic "the student lives in an atmosphere of the law, and absorbs the spirit of its practice, day by day, in the course of actual dealings between lawyer and client. As in the case of the Inns of Court and the English barristers' and solicitors' offices, the student unconsciously develops in such an atmosphere, under the influence of character and personality working in the harness of the law, the trained professional conscience and practical sense-the instinct for right and the consciousness of wrong." 3. The University, by turning out graduates equipped wich such practical training as is necessarily acquired in a Legal Clinic, will contribute to a betterment of the administration of justice in the islands. The "law's delay" is often due to the inexperience of recently graduated lawyers. I will cite just two examples. If the young attorney would draft only undemurrable complaints and answers, or if he knew when he really has a tenable ground for demurrer, this pleading—which in most cases serves but to retard the course of a litigation-would not be so frequently resorted to. And a new lawyer who has no actual experience often attempts to introduce inadmissible or irrelevant evidence. The time wasted in the argument and decision on the propriety of proof goes far to protract a trial. The members of the Board of Regents will readilly think of many other instances. Incidentally, if the University takes the lead in this respect and other law schools in the Philippines should follow, no little improvement would be wrought upon our judicial system. 4. The Law Faculty will have additional material for study. It is to be expected that the professor in charge of the Legal Clinic will in many cases ask the opinion of various members of the faculty on cases falling under their respective subject, because each professor specializes in his line. This will afford the Law Faculty a wider field of research, based on actual cases. 5. Another advantage of establishing the Legal Clinic in the University of the Philippines is that our institution will be one of the first to carry into practice a method which according to Dean Wigmore is "the method of the future".10 Our University has acquired a high reputation in the United States because of the two years' college work as a pre-requisite to admission to the College of Law and also because its law course is a four-year and not a three-year course, in both of which innovations our University is among the first in point of time, and is ahead of most law schools in the United States. Why, then, should not the University of the Philippines be again one of the pioneers, by adopting the Legal Clinic plan? I venture 8 Id. pp. 897-898. 9 XI Illinois Law Review, pp. 597-598; 607-608. 10 See Editorial in XII Illinois Law Review, pp. 37-38. |