Judicial Organization and Procedure

Abstract

The Self-Governing Bar. "In the large city of today, there are thousands of lawyers, but there is no bar."' With this remark, Roscoe Pound five years ago called attention to the situation which had resulted in the United States from the absence of a corporate profession equipped to administer discipline and govern itself. The presence in all communities of lawyers whose character or equipment rendered them unfit to practice had brought the entire profession into disrepute and had contributed largely to the encroachment of banks, trust companies, and other lay agencies upon the legal field. Absence of adequate organization representative of the entire bar prevented the lawyers of the country from exerting effective influence and leadership in politics and government -a weakness which manifested itself particularly in attempts to obtain legislation designed to improve the administration of justice through procedural reform, court reorganization, or changes in substantive law. Leaders of the profession have time and again asserted that the United States is the only progressive nation in the world without an integrated, selfgoverning bar. "In no state," remarked James Bryce, "does there exist any body resembling the English Inns of .Court, with the right of admitting to the practice of public advocacy and of exercising a disciplinary jurisdiction; and in few have any professional associations resembling the English Incorporated Law Society obtained statutory recognition.... Being virtually an open profession, like stockbroking or engineering, the profession has less of a distinctive character and corporate feeling than the barristers of England and France have, and perhaps less than the solicitors of England have."