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1、文档来源于网络，如有重复请自行下载Development of the Legal ProfessionDuring the colonial period in America(1607-1776),there were no law schools to train those interested in the legal profession.Some young men went to England for their education and attended the Inns ofCourt.The Inns were not formal law schools,but w
2、ere part ofthe English legal culture and allowed students to become familiar with English law.Those who aspired to the law during this period generally performed a clerkship or apprenticeship with an established lawyer. After the American Revolution(1775-83),the number oflawyers in-creased rapidly,b
3、ecause neither legal education nor admission to the bar was very strict.The apprenticeshipmethod continued to be the most popular way to receive legal training,but law schools began to come into ex-istence.The first law schools grew out of law offices that specialized in train-ing clerks or apprenti
4、ces.The earliest such school was the Litchfield School in Connecticut,founded in 1784.This school,which taught by the lecture method,placed primary emphasis on commercial law.Eventually,a few col-leges began to teach law as part of their general curriculum,and in 1817 an in-dependent law school was
5、established at Harvard University. During the second halfofthe 19th century,the number oflaw schools in- creased dramatically,from 15 schools in 1850 to 102 in 1900.The law schools ofthat time and those of today have two major differences.First,law schools then did not usually require any previous c
6、ollege work.Second,in 1850 the standard law school curricu-lum could be completed in one year.Later in the 1800s many law schools instituted two-year programs. In 1870 major changes began at Harvard that were to have a lasting impact on legal training.Harvard in-stituted stiffer entrance requirement
7、s;a student who did not have a college degree was required to pass an en-trance test.The law school course was increased to two years in 1871 and to three years in 1876.Also,students were required to pass first-year final examinations before proceeding to the second-year courses. The most lasting ch
8、ange,however,was the introduction ofthe case method of teaching.This method re-placed lectures and textbooks with casebooks.The casebooks (collections of actual case reports) were designed to explain the principles oflaw,what they meant,and how they developed.Teachers then used the Socratic method t
9、o guide the students to a dis-covery oflegal concepts found in the cases.Other schools eventually adopt-ed the Harvard approach,and the case method remains the accepted method of teaching in many law schools today. As the demand for lawyers in-creased during the late 1800s,there was a corresponding
10、acceleration in the creation ofnew law schools.Open-ing a law school was not expensive,and a number ofnight schools,using lawyers and judges as part-time facul-ty members,sprang into existence.Standards were often lax and the cur-riculum tended to emphasize local practice.These schoolsmajor contri b
11、ution lay in making training more readily available to poor,immigrant,and working-class students. In the 20th century,the number of people wanting to study law increased dramatically.By the 1960s the number of applicants to law schools had grown so large that nearly all schools became more selective
12、.At the same time,in response to social pressure and litigation,many law schools began actively recruiting female and minority applicants. Also by the 1960s,the curriculum in some law schools had been expand-ed to include social concerns such as civil rights law and law-and-poverty issues.Internatio
13、nal law courses also became available. A more recent trend in law schools is an emphasis on the use ofcomput-ers for everything from registration to classroom instruction to accessing court forms to student services.Also noteworthy is that more and more law schools are offering courses or special pr
14、ograms in intellectual property law,a field ofspecialization that has grown considerably in recent years.Finally,the increasing use ofadvertising by lawyers has had a profound impact on the legal profession.On television stations across the country one can now see lawyers making appeals to attract new clients.Furthermore,legal clinics,established to handle the busi-ness generated by the increased use of advertising,have spread rapidly. 4
