were more additions to the curriculum, and the completion of all the subjects was required for graduation. Even before this date all examinations were in writing.
At the time the Department of Law opened, law schools were criticized by lawyers as being too theoretical. The three professors who opened the Law Department were themselves office trained and were in a position to know. In their first announcement in the Catalogue of 1860 (p. 63) they pointed out:
To this end they announced that they would conduct a moot court in which all students might participate, and that the faculty would assist the students in their club courts.The active practitioner, engrossed with the cares of business, cannot — or, at least, as proved by experience, does not — give to the students who place themselves in his charge, that attention and assistance essential to give a correct direction to their reading … The effort here will be to make, not theoretical merely, but practical lawyers: not to teach principles merely, but how to apply them.
The moot courts were directed by the faculty, and from the first entry in the "Record of Law Department," October 13, 1859, Professor Cooley presiding, to June 7, 1893, moot courts were as regularly provided for as were lectures. But on September 25, 1893, it was recorded: "The Practice Court is to be under the charge of Professor Mechem." The moot court, which had existed so long without interruption, was displaced by the highly organized and faculty-directed practice court. This was intended to require of every senior participation in a jury case involving questions of fact and a case to be argued and disposed of as a question of law upon an agreed statement of facts. Papers and briefs were to be prepared and filed, and arguments were to be made as in an actual case in court. The following year Thomas Ashford Bogle ('88l) was added to the faculty to have entire charge of the practice court. He was assisted by the other members of the faculty, who sat as judges to hear the cases. Under his masterly direction the practice court was vigorously developed.
As further practical training for the actual work of the law office, a course in Conveyancing was arranged. In this course such papers were drafted by the students as would be expected to be called for in actual practice. James Henry Brewster (Sheffield Scientific School '77, LL.B. Yale '79) was called to devote his entire time to this work. By these and other means the Department of Law endeavored to keep good that early promise to make the work not theoretical merely, but practical as well.
The idea long persisted that the instruction could be made more practical by having a faculty of practicing lawyers and sitting judges. As previously noted, in 1882 a change began. The first full-time professor had had very little experience in practice. For another dozen years the full-time professors were in a minority, and the advantage of having lecturers engaged in practice was stressed in the departmental Announcement. Some objected to the practice court on the ground that the practical work could be done only in a law office. Professor Bogle's answer was: "We are doing it in the Law School."
On account of the rapidly expanding law, the effort to give instruction in all the subjects to all the students was breaking of its own weight. No student could profitably pursue so many studies, and in 1897 election courses were established, and each student was required to elect and complete three. These electives were given as courses of lectures, for the most part by practicing lawyers who were specialists in the various fields. Ten years later most of these special courses
