THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL ON SOLICITORS.
Attorney-General's plan for avoiding a fusion between the two branches of the legal profession seems to us to surrender in principle the whole case. At the dinner of the Incorporated Law Society, on Saturday, Sir R. Webster repeated very earnestly his conviction that any such fusion would be injurious, both to the professions and to the administration of the law. Conscious, however, that his hosts
were against him, and that public opinion was, on the whole, favourable to his hosts' views, he made haste to add that
exchange between the two branches might be greatly facili- tated. If a barrister wished to turn solicitor, he would remove every obstacle from his path, and if a solicitor wished to
become an advocate, he would afford him every facility. That
is to say, we presume, he would abolish, or greatly restrict, the only barrier which now prevents exchange, the three years
which the applicant must waste in doing nothing. He only objected to make his reform complete by fusing the two professions. Why? If a solicitor may, by declaring his wish, become a barrister, why should he not do barrister's work without that formality? Why, in fact—for that is the crux of the matter—should he not advocate in Court the ease he has all along been conducting His change from one profession to the other, even if noted by an examination, cannot make him a more honourable man, or increase his ability, or perfect his education. It must be, for all serious purposes, a pure formality ; and why, for the sake of that formality, is the client's right of choice among experts in the law to be reduced one-half, and his expenses increased by at least 50 per cent., and usually much more If Sir R. Webster thinks the solicitors not educated enough, or in any other way disqualified, why is he willing to admit them to the Bar? He hints, and the Lord Chancellor hinted, that the barrister holds a confidential relation to the Courts which a solicitor could not hold; but surely, if a solicitor may become a barrister at will, that argument savours of professional superstition. Men every day occupy two positions in which different qualities are re- quired of them, and a solicitor may be a barrister for half his time, as easily as a barrister may be a Recorder or a member of Quarter-Sessions. The taint of advocacy does not prevent a barrister from being an excellent Magis- trate while still practising his profession, nor would the taint of " business" prevent a solicitor from being an ex- cellent advocate. On the contrary, just as the barrister usually makes the best Magistrate, so would the solicitor con- stantly make the most efficient advocate. He would, to begin with, really know his case. At all events, if it is not so and the solicitor does by his training disqualify himself mentally or morally for advocacy, then the Attorney-General ought to refuse him admission to the Bar, and not agree as he does that a facile change from one profession to the other, which cannot modify either the character or the education or the standing of the solicitor, should of itself be sufficient qualification. If it is sufficient, all moral justification for the line of demarca- tion which the Attorney-General considers it so important to maintain is given up. Sir R. Webster, we presume, does not contend that admission to the Bar acts as Catholics would contend about ordination, and confers, if not a spiritual grace, at least an indispensable spiritual status.
The truth is, the Attorney-General is still under the in- fluence of a tradition which he was far too gentlemanly to mention in such a place and in such company. There was a time when, in theory at all events, barristers were educated gentlemen and solicitors were not, and when, therefore, the character of the Bar, and its exclusive privilege of pleading in the Courts, acted as checks upon sharp practice or irregular practice, and helped to fill the Courts with a body of lawyers from among whom qualified Judges might easily be selected. There never was much reason in principle for the distinction ; but there was a reason in our national manners, in the habits of society, and in those indefinable but all-powerful traditions which confined certain duties to certain classes, and made it seem, for instance, almost monstrous that a tradesman should be a Member of Parliament, or still more, should hold office in an Administration. The progress of events, the spread of culture —we do not mean of mere learning—and a certain decay of some old opinions, have changed all that ; and the" line "in the legal profession is now as unreasonable in itself as it is injurious to suitors. Sir R. Webster admits this when he allows solicitors to become barristers at will, and it is, indeed, patent to every one familiar with the changes of recent years.
Graduates are swarming into solicitors offices, and the feeling which so often restrained " gentlemen " in the technical sense fromentering the profession has almost universally passed away. There is still a need for still more searching rules as to general education, and the system of expelling those guilty of malprac- tices should be made infinitely more stringent, and more com- pletely automatic in its working, so that a rascally lawyer could not long escape professional ruin; but the solicitors have already become as cultivated and as honourable a body as their rivals. They would be more so still, were they not weighted with the artificial disadvantage which Sir R. Webster so strenuously defends. There never was a profession so important as that of the solicitors so injuriously treated by society and the State. The man who enters it, whatever his abilities, or his accomplishments, or his character, is ipso facto debarred from every object of legitimate profes- sional ambition. He may manage the affairs of the greatest institutions in the country, or be the real master of half a county ; but he can never plead in a Court, never become a Judge, never be recognised in any honorific way by the rulers of the State. He may make money, it is true, though even in that pursuit he is strictly restrained by law ; but he has always to stand behind, to keep his personality sup- pressed, to advise, as it were, in a whisper, and with his hand before his month. He is always the barrister's inferior, and always deprived of the public credit which in every other profession attaches to able or successful management. So complete is the solicitor's seclusion, that it is only the instinct of men about their money which helps them to choose their legal advisers well; and the latter are, in fact, selected by private and verbal recommendations, evidence of any other kind being for the most part unattainable. The intending client may know that certain large affairs are trusted to a certain solicitor, but with that exception, he has nothing to guide him in distinguishing between Mr. Quirk and the best solicitor in the Kingdom. It is wonderful that, while labouring under such dis- abilities, the solicitors have raised their profession to its present position ; but let the legal career be open to both branches alike, through the fusion now universal in America, and they will rapidly complete their work, and besides imposing a still stricter etiquette, will be able to keep down the men who still give justification for the ancient popular prejudice. Indeed, the change itself will keep them down, for half the work of the profession will then be done in the public eye. At present the roguish solicitor is detected only when he over- steps the law, and there are no means, or no means open to the client, of detecting the incompetent solicitor at all.
But fusion will ruin the Bar? We do not believe a word of it, any more than we believe that in a complicated state of society, law will ever be so simplified that highly trained experts will not earn liberal incomes. So long as a nation is rich, and disputes involve large sums, so long will capable advisers as to those disputes be able to charge for their intelli- gence. Half the barristers in practice would make excellent solicitors if only they were permitted to do their clients' business, and would gain in money just as much as their rivals would in dignity and estimation. Besides, that is not the main question, which is the right of the client who pays for all this machinery to employ in Court any trained expert in whom he confides. We do not maintain his right to step outside that limit. Experience shows that only trained lawyers can be trusted to aid instead of em-
barrassing the Courts, and that even the right conceded to suitors of conducting their own cases is a serious impediment
to the administration of justice ; but there is no reason why among experts only one class, and that the one which knows least of the cases in hand, should be permitted to plead. We
only wonder that the solicitors, who have more political though less social power than the barristers, bear their exclu- sion so patiently, or consent in their own house to consider its propriety a debatable question.
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