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Chapter 2: Formal Legal Instruction Begins
The Law Students’ Campaign
The students’ campaign to institute formal legal education in the province did not begin and certainly did not end with Leon Ladner’s 1909 trip to Victoria. Ladner, as president of the Vancouver Law Students’ Association, inherited a mantle from others who had gone before him. As early as September 29, 1900, A. R. Creagh and Frank J. Bayfield, representing themselves as "President" and "Secretary" respectively of the "Law Students’ Society of Vancouver B.C." had written to the Benchers asking that law books be placed in the library. Ladner added his own energy and vision to his predecessors’ work on behalf of articling students and bequeathed a continuing project to his successors.
In their effort to establish a law school in British Columbia, the students were empowered by an almost irresistible cultural logic. Two distinct arguments combined powerfully, each well-illustrated in a short letter published in the 1911 Vancouver Law Students’ Annual. The author, "Quill", was identified at the time as only "a very good friend of the law students", but was subsequently revealed as Mr. Justice Denis Murphy. Murphy, who served on the Supreme Court of British Columbia from 1909 to 1941, had been educated at Ottawa University and served as member of the legislature for Yale from 1900 to 1902. The public interest, "Quill" forcefully asserted, required that lawyers be well trained. The legal profession, however, was failing miserably to meet its obligations. "Quill" argued that if students were to be forced (as was required) both to article and to demonstrate advanced legal knowledge as a precondition to practising law, then it followed as a sort of quid pro quo that they were entitled to have a properly formal education made available to them.
| Mr. Justice Denis Murphy has been revealed as "Quill", author of an important article in support of formal legal education, 1911. |
As for the public interest, "Quill" pointed to "the great status that the profession holds among other vocations of every civilized community" and suggested that the training of the profession was of crucial "importance to the Subject" in three ways:
It was thus appropriate, "Quill" thought, that the Bar of British Columbia had in fact fixed admission standards at a high level. Unfortunately the articling experience as actually administered by Vancouver lawyers fell well short of what was necessary to prepare students adequately for the admission standards that they were forced to meet. A familiar litany of complaints against the unregulated articling process followed. Leading lawyers, "Quill" said, did not care "a ‘tuppence’ how or when the student duly articled to him commences, pursues, or ends his training for the Bar". Students were used merely as "office clerks", their education not only neglected but positively subverted by their masters: "The student, instead of being encouraged by assistance in his reading and by being given time to attend the courts, is practically cut off from such aids. If perchance he devotes any time in attendance at the law courts he is placed in the invidious position of appearing to be imposing upon his employer."
As a result, "Quill" believed student lawyers to suffer from "unpardonable neglect". They were, he said, "being self-trained for the Bar". In an age when duty was taken seriously and in which the sense of obligation constituted a significant moral force, "Quill’s" clinching argument was powerful:
It is a sad reflection upon our Senior Bar that they appear to ignore the reciprocal duty cast upon them by seeing that the added responsibility assumed in respect of those indentured to them is discharged. When it is demanded as a prerequisite to the entry into the privileged ranks of the profession that one must be of good character, training and repute, surely the duty arises to grant the aids and provide the means for the development of such qualifications and attributes.
It is, I hope, not asking too great a sacrifice or the exercise of too great an effort on the part of our masters of the law to encourage us through their personal character, as well as by precept and example, or to contribute or at least attempt to contribute to our education in the intricacies of the law.
No more cogent evidence of their realization of those serious responsibilities can be given (and which if given will go a long way to make us overlook past shortcomings on their part) than that the Benchers at once take steps to organize a law school in British Columbia. I am quite sure that were half a dozen of the leading lawyers to make up their minds to it we would have a fully-equipped law school established within a very short time.
Law students in early twentieth century British Columbia added the force of their own energy and imagination to the power of the logic of this argument for formal legal education and the increased persuasiveness derived from a few influential friends and allies. A persistent campaign in support of formal legal education was managed by the Vancouver Law Students’ Association from the time of its origin right up to the opening of the two law schools in 1914. Not content simply to address the Benchers or to submit a petition, the students worked diligently on these matters. Their effort was sustained at a high and relatively constant level despite the inevitable and frequent changes in leadership that often stymie even the boldest of student initiatives.
The seriousness with which the student campaign was advanced (and also the importance of behind-the-scenes support of elite lawyers) is evident in a letter Leon Ladner wrote on June 1, 1910. The recipient, W. E. Walz, was dean of the University of Maine College of Law and author of an article on "Some Aspects of Legal Education in Germany". Ladner explained that "a friend, Mr. Justice [Aulay] Morrison" had given him the article and that he was writing to ask for more information, for references, and for copies of articles on related subjects. This imposition was justified with a defence of necessity: "There is a dearth of literature relative to this subject in our local Libraries and as several of the leaders of the Bar who are members of the Benchers of the Law Society are not disposed towards spending the necessary funds of the Law Society for the establishment of the Law School it is the intention of the students to prepare as strong a case to that end as they are able to do." The students, Ladner explained, were planning to appear before the Benchers again in October 1910, "after the Royal Commission . . . now sitting in the Province has determined the location of the University".
It is tempting to imagine that the student campaign may have benefited considerably from not only diligence and the assistance of friends in high places but also from the presence of a sort of double-agent operating within the privileged sanctum of the law society. Oscar Bass, the law student who had written the Benchers in 1900 to ask that a lecture programme be implemented, served as secretary of the law society from 1905 to 1913. Alfred Watts has noted that Bass may have played a pivotal role in bringing the Benchers around on the issue of legal education:
[F]or many years, there were efforts by the law students to get some form of lectures going. And the benchers for many years were most unhelpful in that regard. Whether they weren’t interested, or figured everybody could learn like they learned, I guess that was probably it, they didn’t do very much about it. And it wasn’t until I think around 1907 when a fellow named Oscar Bass who was then the secretary, obviously a very capable guy, he had a pretty wicked pen, but still he was a capable fellow, and he started them up and got things going and got in touch with people in England, Odgers and other people like that who were good enough to send out material. And eventually in about 1913 they finally got a law school going in Vancouver, which in the end would have been very similar to the law school I went to in 1934.
The proposed law school’s ardent supporters faced a dilemma as they attempted to organize formal legal education in British Columbia during the first decade of the twentieth century. Continuing uncertainty as to whether British Columbia’s much discussed but still non-existent university would actually come into being, much less as to whether the institution, if founded, would be ready, willing, and able to play a role in professional education left supporters of formal legal education in something of a quandary. While many of them might have wished to see law teaching taken over by the university, they could not afford to simply await the appearance, as if by magic, of a university law faculty. This event, they knew full well, might never happen. Other supporters, however, must have genuinely doubted the wisdom of creating elaborate structures of professional education that could at any time be rendered redundant by the development of a provincial university.
In any event, by 1911 the student campaign had made considerable progress. Their flagship publication, the Vancouver Law Students’ Annual, that year reproduced at length notes of lectures that had been given on their invitation, and the students expressed their thanks to the Benchers and the Bar for the time that they had devoted to delivering lectures. The students claimed that both the law society Benchers and the lecturers supported their campaign to establish a law school, and the need for some such institution was emphasized during speeches at their annual banquet in February 1911. Provincial Attorney-General W. J. Bowser apparently promised that a room in the courthouse would be made available for the students to use.
| The Honourable W. J. Bowser, Attorney-General, 1911. |
Bowser was as good as his word, and the next year’s Annual reported that the students had indeed been given a room in the courthouse. While progress was being made, parallel developments to found a university had muddied the waters considerably by 1912. There was some danger that the needs of law students might be lost in a larger flurry of educational innovation. The students noted with concern that:
[t]he British Columbia University will soon be here. So soon, in fact, that the establishment of a law school must not be lost sight of. While we realize that British Columbia’s University, in order to measure up to the standard it should set, could not be complete without a faculty of law, nevertheless this question must not be lost sight of. The benchers have again been petitioned to take the matter up, and in view of the consideration they have shown us in holding examinations in Vancouver, we feel sure they will be only too pleased to take care of the students’ interests in this direction.
By 1913 the students had succeeded in arranging a coordinated series of lectures that fell just short of what might be attained by a formal law school. Judge James Moses Coady’s recollections are recorded in a 1979 interview with Alfred Watts, which tells us much about the curriculum this informal series of lectures covered. It is even more revealing, perhaps, of the very great divergence of attitude within the legal profession toward the mentoring obligations of established lawyers:
Judge Watts: Well that—you articled in 1913. [Yes.] That was just at the time the whole business of a Law Society school came to a head. What are your recollections of that?
Judge Coady: Well, Garfield King was the main mover in that along with Gerry McGeer and one or two others probably and it was decided that we should interview judges, and members of the bar, and set up a series of lectures. Perhaps none of them gave more than three or four lectures really in the course of the year, you know, but it was something, otherwise, we simply had the textbooks; torts and contracts, and so on; so that was done. I think it was Charlie Tysoe, he was a law student at the time. . . . I think it was Charlie Tysoe that interviewed, so he told me at one time, E. P. Davis. E. P. Davis would have nothing to do with it. He wasn’t going to encourage the development of legal talent among young people coming up. That was part of his living. . . . But they went to [L. G.] McPhillips. Now McPhillips was the one who backed them up and McPhillips was one of the leading counsel in Vancouver at the time. And then we got the Judges. Judge [Denis] Murphy gave us a few lectures on evidence. Judge [Aulay] Morrison gave us a few lectures on equity, believe it or not, and Judge Howay on bills and notes, the Bills of Exchange Act really. And Robie Reid of Bowser, Reid and Wallbridge, he lectured on real property and W. H. D. Ladner who was at that time in the Bowser, Reid office and doing all of their County Court work, some of their police court work and perhaps a bit of their Supreme Court work as well and Rex MacDonald who was a partner of Bird—J. Edward Bird; and who else? Oh, Clement gave us a lecture or two on constitutional law and [D. A. McDonald?] yeah, well D. A. McDonald on contracts and [R. W.] Hannington on common law.
Judge Watts: What about Joseph Martin?
Judge Coady: I never took a lecture from him. I saw his name and his picture in the Annual there. I don’t recall him. I must have missed his lecture. He may have given one or two but that was all. . . .
Judge Watts: But—did the students feel they got—quite a bit from those lectures?
Judge Coady: Oh yes, oh yes. We made prolific notes, you know, and exchanged notes and so on and we had these things typed out and we sort of prepared briefs and prepared for exams. They were very helpful. It is pretty dry reading you know if you start in on torts and contracts and equity and so on.
| L. G. McPhillips an early prominent supporter of developing a law school in Vancouver, 1914. |
Student pressure was relentlessly sustained. An editorial in the 1913 Vancouver Law Students’ Annual discussed the need for a law school, Dr. Elliot Rowe delivered a speech on the need for a law school at the annual banquet of that year, and a tongue-in-cheek timetable for the development of a university law faculty was published. The Benchers, probably exhausted by this zealous display of youthful energy, invited the students to draft their proposals for a law school curriculum. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the intractability of curriculum debates in the late twentieth century may be inclined to suspect the Benchers of having issued this "invitation" only to dissipate student energies. But if such Machiavellian plotting coloured the actions of the Benchers, it was useless. A curriculum report was efficiently produced and duly published in the Annual.
The students moved simultaneously on all fronts. They wrote to the Vancouver Bar Association (not to be confused with the Law Society of British Columbia), urging the formation of a law school. The minutes of that association’s executive meeting for January 1914 record that "upon motion of Mr. F. J. T. Lucas seconded by Mr. S. S. Taylor the following committee was appointed to assist the Students in their effort towards the establishment of such a school, viz:—Mr. Douglas Armour, Mr. R. L. Reid, Mr. W. B. A. Ritchie". The historical record lapses at this point, unfortunately. We cannot know what exactly followed from this meeting or how precisely the Bar association, law students’ association, and law society worked together. However it came about, the sustained student campaign triumphed spectacularly within the year as law schools opened in both Vancouver and Victoria in the autumn of 1914.
Copyright © 1995 The University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. All rights reserved.
Please address questions or comments to Professor W. Wesley Pue, pue@law.ubc.ca
