136
The Green Bag
Inability to draw good pleadings may be due to the lack of adequate instruc tion in pleading and practice given in our law schools under the modern case system, or to the general fact that the requirements for admission to the bar have been too low in the past. Per haps an apprenticeship in a lawyer's office should be required before or after admission to the bar, so that the young man may learn the practical things of his profession before he is permitted to practise on his own account. I certainly favor lodging in our trial courts authority to suspend a lawyer from practice upon its appearing by the pleadings he files or his conduct at the
trial table, that he is incompetent. Arbi trariness and prejudice of the trial judge can be guarded against by requiring him to refer the question of the lawyer's competency to a standing or special committee of the bar to re-examine the supposed incompetent lawyer, investi gate his record, and report its findings, upon and in accordance with which the court shall act. If an unfavorable re port is made, suspension should only be until passage of a satisfactory exami nation. Criticism of the courts because of the law's delays and the apparent failure o justice in special cases is due in very large measure to the incompetency of lawyers.
How to Simplify Procedure on Appeal1 BY JUDGE CHARLES H. CAREY /^OURTS and lawyers now make jus- or no binding force. I would have it ^-^ tice a secondary consideration; they so that a plaintiff desiring to sue may proceed on the theory that the rules must file a notice that upon a certain day he be adhered to even though the result is will ask relief against a party, and when to bring the victory to the party who this notice is duly served the plain ought not to win; and they have built tiff shall be entitled to his judgment up fine theories of the law under which unless the defendant demands a state precedent must be followed to absurd ment of the claim; but that this state conclusions. Precedents have accumu ment, if demanded and furnished, need lated, and the fecundity of the modern be no more than a memorandum. The printing press seems to have no limit; answer, like the claim, should be in so that law libraries with hundreds of formal. It will be quite sufficient if volumes of decided cases must be de it states whether the defendant wishes pended upon for the purpose of finding a to contest the claim, except that if it clue to the path through labyrinths as diffi is desired to offset, or to confess and cult as those of ancient Egypt or Crete. avoid, this may be done. But there need Now I advocate a total and radical be no formalities or niceties of lan change. I would make it so that rules guage, and little attention need be given of pleading or procedure are of little to the accuracy of any statement made on either side. There will be no place . 'From an address delivered before the Oregon for motions or demurrers. . . . Bar Association, Nov. 22, 1911.
