THOUGHTS ON . . . . . . . . . BOMBAY PRESIDENCY 9
- Inability to express in clear language what the student has in his mind.
These are undoubtedly very serious defects in a student of Law and something must be done to remove them. How can these defects be removed ? We must first of all understand what these defects are due to. In my opinion these defects are due to two things, viz. a faulty curriculum and a faulty method of instruction.
From the educationist’s point of view the study of Law requires a study of certain other auxiliary subjects without which the study of Law alone would be incomplete equipment for the practice of the Profession. What these auxiliary subjects should be will not be difficult to enumerate if we remember that a lawyer must have a legal mind. In the opinion of a keen observer whom Augustine Birrell quotes approvingly in his Obiter Dicta, a legal mind chiefly displays itself by illustrating the obvious, explaining the evident and explatiating on the common place. Disregarding for the moment, the quip conveyed in the observation, I think it contains an important bit of truth in so far as it suggests what the real business of a lawyer is. According to the observation, the business of a lawyer is to argue. So important a part does argument play in a lawyer’s business that I am prepared to say that argument is the summum bonum of a lawyer’s being. The essential requisites for the development of the argumentative ability are :
a. A knowledge of the individual and how he functions in society.
b. A knowledge of the working of the human mind.
c. A mind trained to drawing logical inferences.
In addition to those fundamental requirements of argumentative ability, there are other requisites, purely ornamental but none-the-less necessary, of grace of language and of orderly presentment. To put it in concrete terms, a lawyer’s training apart from the study of law must include the study of the following subjects: (1) Sociology, (2) Psychology,
(3) Logic, (4) Rhetoric and the art of public speaking, and
(5) Command over language. None of these subjects form a part of the present curriculum of the Law course. The first step, therefore, is to reform the curriculum and to see that these subjects are included in it.