The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-02-18

PRESIDENT CHARLES f. LIBBY.
not only in matters which concern pri-
vate and individual interests, but also in
its larger functions pertaining to legisla-
ton and the administration of justice in
the courts.
If it were necessary to offer at this late
day any justification for the existence of
the legal profession, we might well point
to the history of our own Republic whose
institutions and laws owe whatever their
is in them of peculiar merit and value,
more to the members of the legal pro-
II ssion who bore so large a part in the
s ping and moulding of them, than to
~ other class in the community, but
my object now is not to seek the reasons
why the lawyer has always been an in
dispensable factor in the life and growth
of nations and communities, but rather
to inquire in what way this association
representing the whole bar of the State
can best promote and accomplish the OBJ
iects for which it was established, and
which are declared by its charter to be,
to promote the interests of the legal pro-
fession and to institute legal reforms;
and in considering these matters, / think
it will be found that the reforms which
may be suggested do not concern the
legal profession alone, but affect directly
the larger interests of the public, and yet
they are matters with which our profess
sion is best able to deal, and in which we
as lawyers should take the lead, for
hold that the lawyer stands for much
more than his individual interests in the
Community, and never attains large
measure of success unless he keeps in
touch with the spirit of his own genera
ton and voices its requirements.
If there is anything with which we
lawyers can reproach ourselves, it is a
spirit of undue conservatism which is
the natural outcome of our legal train
ing. We are SO much bound down to
precedent and authority that we often
forget the principle that underlies them,
and our respect for institutions some
times leads us to ignore the interests they
represent
gradual, the personal element in them is
SO slight, the interests that cluster around
them so strong and unyielding, that they
seem to offer little opportunity for limo
walton and change.
The legal mind is almost the last to
yield to the demand for change in what
ever affects the forms and administration
of the law, and then only where the GU
mulative force of public opinion has
made itself felt in some irresistible way.
: BY the nature of their lives and studies,
lawyers are less susceptible than others
to the influence of changed conditions
which affect the community at large.
The historical rather than the philoso
phical element is with them uppermost
and even the methods of procedure, the
forms of actions and the machinery of
II 4.,1-1 = hot, L. %.
rigidity which is almost uncomfortable to
the layman, who judges the usefulness
of institutions from a practical rather
than sentimental standpoint. There is
no sanctity which hedges in legal more
than other institutions, and if these re-
spond less readily to new conditions, the
legal profession as their recognized
guardians, suffer in the popular estima-
ton from that fact, as it is assumed that
the selfish considerations of our profess
ion stand in the way Of reform; if the
machinery of the law is too cumbersome,
complicated, or expensive to meet the
wants of the busy world OF today, other
means will be found to. take its place,
which if less accurate and authoritative
will give at least prompt, and for that
reason, more satisfactory results. No
LAWYER of many years experience in
gradual decline in the numbers of actions
entered in court and the disposition
shown by the business world to seek
some other method of settling contro-
versies than by appeals to. legal .trlbu-
nails. The reason in part for this seems
to me plain. The methods of the law
have not kept pace with the, wants of
modern times. They. are in many re-
spects too slow, uncertain and expensive,
and the failure of our profession to
promptly recognize this fact has result
ed in a loss of business that has been di-
verified to other channels. The practice
of the law is itself undergoing change.
The most lucrative branch of practice to-
day is not court practice, but office prac-
tice, not advocacy but counsel. Law.
like medicine, is deemed valuable for its
prevention of evils rather than its cure.
This does not mean that courts and
judges are any less important today then
ever, or that recourse must not be bad to
them now as formerly for the settlement
Of important controyerted matters, but