its way had been easier. I am glad to say that it seems to me today that the College of Law is in a better condition than it has ever been before. I will not flatter my colleagues by telling you how good a faculty we have, notwithstanding the youthful appearance of pretty near all of them, beginning with the Dean, but I will say that I have the greatest confidence in that faculty. I think they are doing good work. I ask for them and in their behalf all the help and inspiration that you can give them. I need not mention, yet I am going to, the man who has the longest connection with the law school of the University. I have known him, at first slightly, and in these latter years intimately, from the time when he came over here while still on the bench, to give his first lectures in the early days of the law school; and I am going to ask you, Mr. President, to do me a favor when I conclude my own remarks, by permitting me to ask Judge Harker to supplement the welcome I have given you by adding a word or two of his own. The Judge has been, I will not say the grandfather, but the father, of the law school, and he is keeping in close touch with it and will keep in close touch with it, I am sure, until he is no longer able to be active. I love and honor the Judge, as you do, and I feel that my welcome, even though it be the official welcome through the President of the University, would not be altogether complete without a word from the man whose life has been in the life of this College of Law. With your permission, therefore, I ask you, sir, to call the Judge out, to say a word. (Applause.) THE PRESIDENT: I am sure nothing would please us more than to comply with President Kinley's suggestion that we might have a word of welcome from our old friend, Judge Harker, who, like him, is the friend of all the world. Judge Harker. (Applause.) HONORABLE OLIVER A. HARKER: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Bar Association: This takes me by surprise; but President Kinley is given to springing surprises on people; he likes to do that. I know nearly all of you personally. It is the second occasion I have had to welcome the State Bar Association to the University of Illinois. The other time was in 1911. We are glad to see you here now; the surroundings are better. Before we were in the old chemical laboratory building, the walls and the floors of which had been saturated with chemicals so long that the smells were not like those of roses, especially after a rain, and it happened that you were over there on one of those occasions. We are now, as we think, located in the ideal law building of the Universities of the middle west. I have seen all of them and I haven't seen any of them that I think can equal this one. We are glad to have you here, not simply to see what is being done here in behalf of the law school, the training of students here to become members of your profession, but to show you what we are doing elsewhere in our departments of engineering, agriculture, economics, and the various other departments that we have here. Sometime this afternoon. there will be opportunity for you to visit the University buildings, the campus, and the grounds to the south of us. I am very glad to say that conveyances will be furnished for those who want to go farther than the buildings. I thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.) THE PRESIDENT: I am sure that we feel very much at home after we have been welcomed by President Kinley and by Judge Harker. We will now have the Secretary's report. MR. STEPHENS: I hope you all have these reports of committees, because they are printed in order that we might shorten the work of the Association, and at the same time get into the printed record a report of the work of the organization. The report of the Secretary begins on page one. There is not very much of importance to call your attention to, although you are always interested to know just exactly how many members we have. We began this year with 3441, and ended with 3557, net, and we count our membership on actual, paid-up members. I desire to call the attention of the members to the service which we have established in the last year. We have established an office in Springfield with full time, paid assistants to take care of the work. We now have two rooms on the seventh floor of the First National Bank building, where there is an assistant with one or two stenographers at all times at your call, and with this equipment the Springfield office has become the Springfield representative of the members of the Association. They are expected to use this service and the employees as their own. It has been our dream that the Illinois State Bar Association ought to be one that has in it such interests that every variety of lawyer in the state can belong, and want to belong. Some people have criticised the growing tendency to play golf of the opening day of the Association, but it has always seemed to me that the lawyer who came here with the intention of forgetting the office for a day, playing golf and getting acquainted with some good fellows in his profession, losing a few balls and assisting in filling a few ponds and streams which run through the grounds with his golf balls, had at least an interest in the organization of the Association, and when the time comes when the Association is to stand for something in Illinois, that lawyer will stand with the Association although he came in over the golf route. Another lawyer came in on the law reform route, another on the legal education route. Personally, I do not care what route he gets in on, as long as he is here, and it is a legitimate proper function for a lawyer. (Applause.) REPORT OF SECRETARY To the President and Members of the Illinois State Bar Association: GENTLEMEN: We began the year with 3441 members. During the year 267 Illinois lawyers have been elected to membership, 33 have died, 10 resigned, and 87 dropped from the list on account of non-payment of dues, giving us a net gain of 137 members and making our present membership 3578. At the present time we have 22 applications for membership pending, as shown by the report of the Admissions Committee. One of the interesting things about our new members is the fact that, as is generally known, the Illinois State Bar Association officially welcomes the new lawyers into the profession on the day of their admission and gives them a complimentary luncheon. In this way the new lawyer becomes acquainted with the state organization on the day of his admission and quite a number of them want to join just as soon as they are located in their profession. In fact a large proportion of our applications for membership are now coming from lawyers who became acquainted with the Association in this way. For a number of years it has been the dream of the officers of the organization that we would have a separate office for the Association with full time paid assistants to take care of the work and during the past year this dream has come true. During the year we have leased two rooms on the Seventh floor of the First National Bank Building at Springfield, where the Assistant Secretary can be found at all times with at least one stenographic assistant, and the rooms are located on the same floor with the law offices of the Secretary. With this equipment the Secretary of the Bar Association and his assistants have become the Springfield representatives of the members of the Association throughout the State and they are expected to use this service just as though the employees were their own employees. This has been advertised very largely through our membership with the result that the office is being used daily for a large variety of services in the Courts and Departments at Springfield. Illustrations of the kind of services rendered without cost to our members are: Obtained a copy of a refused instruction from the files of the Supreme Court. Ascertained the names of the officers of an Illinois corporation from their latest annual report. Sent information concerning the inventories of estates from the files of the Attorney-General's office. Obtained dismissal of dissolution suit against a corporation, by payment of franchise taxes, to enable it to bring suit at once. Advised a member how to correct an error in a reply brief already filed in the Supreme Court. Checked over an abstract of record filed in the Supreme Court to insert the page of original record. Procured an automobile license for a member who wanted immediate service. Furnished exact copy of a law passed in 1877 to show the original punctuation. Attended to filing several records in Appellate and Supreme Courts. "I called your office at 3:30 p.m. to get me the information I needed in trial of a case I was then engaged in. It was on hand in the morning mail and that one thing was worth more to me than all the money I will ever pay the Association in dues." The Secretary hopes that every member of the Association will consider that Capitol 3153 Springfield, is the telephone number of his Springfield office where a representative is on hand during office hours to serve him. The routine work of the Association was carried through the year without a hitch. In September the Board of Governors met in Chicago with the Chairmen of the various committees and laid out the plans for the year. The District meetings were run off on schedule time and this year every district held a meeting. The rule making power in the Courts was the principal subject for discussion at these meetings. The Board of Governors met again at the time of the annual Supreme Court dinner. It so happened that this date fell on the same date as the Army and Navy Football Game in Chicago which disarranged our plans considerably and the Secretary had to find forty football tickets as an incidental feature of service for our members. The February meeting of the Board of Governors was held at Peoria, when the work of the various committees was discussed and further plans laid for a legislative program. Unfortunately, the rule making bill was defeated in the Senate but a foundation has been laid among the members of the Bar of Illinois, so that if the Association continues its work there is no question that eventually this law may be passed in Illinois. Most of the Committees of the Association have been active during the year and the details of their work is reflected in their reports. Respectfully submitted, R. ALLAN STEPHENS, Secretary. |