To such as these a book of this nature can have but little interest. It is to those who by choice or chance are, or intend to become, engaged in that most laborious of all forms of legal business, the trial of cases in court, that the suggestions and experiences which follow are especially addressed.
It is often truly said that many of our best lawyers--I am speaking now especially of New York City--are withdrawing from court practice because the nature of the litigation is changing. To such an extent is this change taking place in some localities that the more important commercial cases rarely reach a court decision. Our merchants prefer to compromise their difficulties, or to write off their losses, rather than enter into litigations that must remain dormant in the courts for upward of three years awaiting their turn for a hearing on the overcrowded court calendars. And yet fully six thousand cases of one kind or another are tried or disposed of yearly in the Borough of Manhattan alone.
This congestion is not wholly due to lack of judges, or that they are not capable and industrious men; but is largely, it seems to me, the fault of the system in vogue in all our American courts of allowing any lawyer, duly enrolled as a member of the Bar, to practise in the highest courts. In the United States we recognize no distinction between barrister and solicitor; we are all barristers and solicitors by turn. One has but to frequent the courts to become convinced that, so long as the ten thousand members at the New York County Bar all avail themselves of their privilege to appear in court and try their own clients' cases, the great majority of the trials will be poorly conducted, and much valuable time wasted.
The conduct of a case in court is a peculiar art for which many men, however learned in the law, are not fitted; and where a lawyer has but one or even a dozen experiences in court in each year, he can never become a competent trial lawyer. I am not addressing myself to clients, who often assume that, because we are duly qualified as lawyers, we are therefore competent to try their cases; I am speaking in behalf of our courts, against the congestion of the calendars, and the consequent crowding out of weighty commercial litigations.