or men who have proved their inability in private practice, but young, energetic, ambitious, progressive men, not quite fresh from the law school, but from the law school with a few years' experience added, men who are growing and still have ample possibilities of adapting themselves to new things. These should go into the inferior places, not necessarily the lowest, but still the inferior places, and the higher places should be filled by promotion. The prospect of promotion is necessary to induce good men to enter the lower places, and do their best work in them.

There should be no change in such a law department, upon a possible change of the city administration. Even if the mayor, having the power of appointment, in order to have complete confidence in the head of the law department, sees fit to make a change in that, the assistants should stay there. We may possibly admit that, under some circumstances, the first assistant, or two assistants, might also be changed, so that the headship of the office would be secure against illness or absence or possible death. But I will not make a single concession beyond that. One alternate is enough; and below that the law office should be a permanent bulwark of the people against opposing interests, filled with men who have earned their places by open competition in the first place, and by competition among themselves after that, until the best have got to the top. It needs specialists in taxation, it needs specialists in assessment law, it needs specialists in accident cases, it needs specialists in all the great branches into which the law is subdividing itself, who are able to compete with the most skillful specialists that can be put up against them.

Look at the picture of the great city of Buffalo, with its hundreds of millions of property, with its millions of dollars raised every year by taxation of the people to carry on the corporate business, when the head of the law department changes upon a political revolution-because he is elected here, and he might go anyhow if he were appointed by the mayornot only he goes but nearly all his assistants, from top to bottom, go out with him, and the law business of the

city is thrown into chaos, or liable to be thrown into chaos every few years. It is hard to understand how an intelligent community can submit to this, but this is our exact situation as has been pointed out by Mr. O'Brian. Let me say for our credit there are one or two in that office who have grown so useful that they have stayed there through several administrations, and this must be true elsewhere. As a concession to the necessities of the case they cannot be removed, and that concession gives away the whole case. There should be not only one or two or three, but they should be all of that kind.

One other suggestion I want to make. Even the matter of personality, which Mr. O'Brian referred to, and which is so important a qualification of lawyers who fill the higher positions and who represent the law department before the courts and before the public,—even as to that quality let me point out that law examinations have reached a stage at which it can be ascertained more definitely and with more certainty than in any other class. of examinations that are known, except perhaps surgical, and the exception depends upon the same reason. You can test that in an examination of lawyers or of surgeons by practical methods. In a surgical examination you can call the surgeon in and make him operate upon a patient, and they do this in the more intelligent examinations; and in a law examination you can call the candidate in and give him a new question, tell him to get up and argue this before the board of examiners, and you test his personality right then and there. You can have a moot court and let the candidates debate with one another. That is a recognized and proper part of a law examination, to test the intelligence, address and personality of the applicants.

Mr. Buell:

I was very much interested in the very able address which was given by Mr. O'Brian and I want to say that I heartily concur in what he has said and in what has been so well said by the gentlemen who have discussed this question. I think this paper interested me more than any other topic on the list and I think perhaps it was on account of this paper more than anything else that I came

the 700 miles which I have come to listen to what was to be said. It is a question which we have had to deal with very recently in Wisconsin, as has been stated by Mr. O'Brian, and we have had to act upon it somewhat differently than has been done in most places. As you well know, our law only provides for the exemption of one position in the attorney-general's department. The legislature at its last session reorganized the department and created a new position, that of deputy attorneygeneral. Previous to that there were the positions of attorney-general, first asssistant, second assistant and law examiner, beside the subordinate positions. The legislature, in its last session, reorganized the department, did away with the position of the law examiner, created positions of three assistant attorneys-general and also created the position of deputy attorney-general. Under the law as it stood up to that time the position of first assistant attorney-general was the exempt position. When the legislature last winter created a position of deputy attorney-general the position of deputy became the exempt position and the position of first assistant came within the competitive class. An application was made to exempt the position of first assistant attorney-general for the reason of its confidential relation and for the further reason that it was not practicable to give a competitive examination for a legal position. We had several hearings upon that question and we got all the light that we could from outside and we even wrote to the secretary of the National Civil Service Reform League and we were advised that it probably was not practicable to give an examination for a legal position, at least it was not done in the East. On the hearing, the attorney-general, his deputy, the former attorney-general and several former assistant attorneys-general came before the commission, besides a large number of able lawyers from the various parts of the state, some 15 or 20 of them, I think, and they invariably said that it was not practicable to give an examination for a legal position; that you could not determine by examination the fitness of one for this position. We decided, however, after the hearing, not to exempt the position of first assistant attorney-general.

We did except the incumbent, Mr. Titus, who had held that position for some time; for what seemed to the commission sufficient public reasons required the exception of him personally. But if we had given the legal examination which we afterwards gave for the position of first deputy fire marshal I do not know that we should have excepted Mr. Titus personally.

The law required that the first deputy fire marshal should be a lawyer. We had never given a legal examination up to that time but we decided that we would give one. One principal objection which was urged to the giving of a legal examination was this, "Why some young fellow who had come fresh from the law school who has had three years in the law school and has come glib with his definitions will pass the examination, while some old fellow who has been out in the rough and tumble of the fight for ten or fifteen or twenty years and who has forgotten his definitions will fall down." Now, it seemed to us that questions could be so framed that would be fair to the young man who had come fresh from the law school and at the same time would not be unfair to the man who had been in active practice for ten or fifteen or twenty years. While I don't set our questions up as models and while if I were preparing them again I should perhaps change them somewhat, yet we did attempt in giving the examinations to get questions which would not be unfair to the older practitioner and I think the result has justified us in the belief that we had done that. Now, what we did was this: we first prepared a preliminary paper in which we asked for information with reference to the age and where the party was educated, whether he was a graduate of a high school,normal school, of a university or college, and if so what ones, whether he was a graduate of a law school and if so what one, and if not where and when he was admitted to practice, whether he had ever briefed and argued cases in the federal courts, whether he had ever briefed and argued cases in our supreme courts and if so giving about the number and the names of the principal cases, so that we might get all the information that was possible in reference to the man and determine who theoretically ought

to receive the position. We also prepared 25 questions upon which they passed a written examination. They were marked 4 upon their preliminary paper out of a possible 10 and 6 upon the actual examination which they passed. Now, here is the strange, perhaps, and at least the satisfactory point: I was the only lawyer upon the commission and they rather insisted upon my marking the papers, and I did so, but I did not mark the preliminary papers and when I had marked them and took the markings to the secretary the preliminary papers had already been marked, and invariably, with one exception, the persons that I had marked as standing the highest and being the most fit for the positions were those whose preliminary papers had been marked as theoretically the ones who ought to stand at the head of the list. We had standing at the head of our list a man of middle age, a graduate of Madison high school, a graduate of the university law school, a man who had been county judge in one of our counties and who had briefed and argued many cases in our supreme court, a man probably 45 or 46 years of age, in the prime of life. We had standing as second on the list a municipal judge of one of the counties of the state, a man who is a graduate of our normal schools, a graduate of our Wisconsin law school, who had occupied the position of county superintendent of schools and district attorney of the county for some years and who at the present time was municipal judge, a man who had been in the practice some 10 or 12 years. We had standing third on our list a man who was a graduate of the Eau Claire high school, a graduate of the university, a graduate of the university law school, and serving his second term as district attorney of Eau Claire County. We had as standing No. 4 on our list a man perhaps 55 years of age, a graduate of the Michigan University, not a graduate of a law school, however, but an author of a text book, a man who had briefed and argued at least 50 cases in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and had briefed and argued cases in the Supreme Court of the United States. Now those four men stood right at the head; there was very little choice between them. I venture this assertion, that you could