The result was that the community was thoroughly aroused and such a large vote was brought out that the City Hall ticket was given a crushing defeat.

Mr. Miller then asked whether this victory justified the assumption that the people of Chicago were capable of electing judges. His conclusion was that an electorate of one million cannot possible elect judges in any real sense when they have over 70 judges to keep in office on six-year terms.

"Not one voter in ten thousand (to speak with great moderation) has sufficient knowledge of all the candidates to make an intelligent selection; and the result is simply and clearly haphazard. It is no exaggeration to say that equally good results could be secured if the judges were chosen by lot from the Chicago Bar at large."

It would be just as reasonable, this speaker said, for the people of Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan or Iowa to elect their Circuit, Probate, and County Judges at large on a single ballot.

The cost of the Chicago election was greater than the salaries of the 20 judges elected for their term of six years at $12,000 a

year.

As a member of the Illinois Constitutional Convention, Mr. Miller has led a movement to get away from this absurdity of popular selection. There is now incorporated in the draft article on judiciary a provision that after five years the people of Cook County may vote upon the question of adopting the following plan for the selection of their judges, namely; appointment to be by the Governor from a small list of eligibles submitted by the Justices of the Supreme Court, the two Justices from the district including Cook County concurring. Then after six years these judges, if willing to serve longer, are to have their names submitted at a judicial election, in which there will be no other candidates. The question put to the voter will be simply this: "Judge Is this judge to be continued in office?" This plan reserves to the people the only part of the elective function which they can safely exercise in an intelligent manner.

Mr. Miller cited facts which tend strongly to show that this system will be adopted for Cook County if the new constitution is ratified. The largest and strongest business and civic associations in Chicago have gone on record in favor of this method, and

the polling of the Bar has given the surprising result of indicating that a majority even of the lawyers have decided that there can be no such thing as a genuine popular election of judges in that city.

LEGAL ETHICS SESSION.

At the request of the Committee on Legal Ethics, the third session of the Conference was devoted to this subject, Mr. Edward A. Harriman, Chairman of that committee, presiding.

The first matter disposed of was a request from the Secretary of the Treasury that the local bar associations render his department assistance in its important work of admitting lawyers to practice at the Treasury Bar and to aid at times in purging that list.

It appears that there are 8000 members of the Treasury Bar, of whom probably two-thirds are lawyers. Laymen are permitted to prosecute claims under the law, and in the discussion of the resolution, the question of the relation of the lawyer to this class of service was keenly analyzed. The opinion seemed to be that the service of accountants and so-called "tax experts," while entirely necessary, should be subservient in all cases in which legal questions are involved to the control of the lawyer.

With this understanding, the resolution heretofore embodied, recommending to local associations that they assist the Secretary of the Treasury in this matter, was adopted.

Speaking on the subject of unlawful practice of the law, Mr. Julius Henry Cohen told of the work of the Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association, of which he is Chairman, on this subject.

Julius Henry Cohen:

I have nothing but contempt for the point of view that we lawyers must band ourselves together to keep the business of the practice of the law within our control, and that we ought to stop illegitimate criticism. I share that point of view not at all, because if the work can be done by some other agency with equal benefit to the community, it certainly is not the business of lawyers to stand in the way of it. Moreover, I am not at all certain that the competition hurts us lawyers. If we look at the

matter from a purely selfish point of view, let everybody practice law.

A very good client of mine made a lease of an apartment house in New York for a long term of years. The lease was negotiated by a real estate broker. At the time when the lease was to be executed my client was in a hurry to go west on business. The broker came to him with the lease already drawn. My client said, "I will send this lease down to my lawyer to have him look it over." The broker said, "That is not at all necessary, I am drawing these leases every day, and I probably know more about such leases than your lawyer does." Relying upon the statement of the broker and being in a hurry to get away, my client signed the lease. That situation has created employment for three law firms and a litigation that has involved a controversy in the courts, and so far as creating business for lawyers is concerned, that real estate broker was a friend of ours.

The lay community is in no position to know how it is injured by the furnishing of legal advice by laymen. That real estate broker, when he was interviewed in an effort to call him to account, showed us the door; he said that no bar association could discipline him. That man had not only taken a commission from my client, but he took a commission also from the sub-tenant to whom he turned over the property. The layman does not realize how much protection it is to him to have a bar association ready to discipline a lawyer who violates the standards of professional conduct which, let us say, are a great deal higher than the commercial standards. You cannot be a lawyer for a trust company and at the same time be the confidential adviser of the man who is making the deed of trust. You cannot be the lawyer for a title company that is drawing a contract with a view of getting the insurance business on that piece of real estate, and at the same time advise the buyer and seller fully. Indeed, the president of a large title company recently said: "We do not pretend to represent the buyer and the seller." When I was younger in the practice of the law than I am now I was made assistant counsel to the medical society. Of course, the druggists all agreed that the doctors were forming a doctors' trust, but, as a matter of fact, we were safeguarding the community. Within the last three

months I have had experience with three different tax experts who thought they knew the law.

About a year and a half ago Mr. Boston's committee and the committee of which I am chairman each appointed a sub-committee which sat down and discussed this matter for over a year, and they made an announcement which I believe should govern the Bar in its treatment of this matter of the unlawful practice of the law.

First, that the lawyer cannot serve two masters.

Second, the community should be protected against the giving of professional skilled advice when the person giving it is not authorized to give it.

Third, the lawyer's services cannot be supplied and sold as merchandise.

Fourth, the lawyer cannot have his services advertised and employment solicited by a lay agency.

With those four principles you have the basis for a legitimate movement limiting the practice of law to lawyers. Explain to the public that what you are interested in is not in extending the field of employment for lawyers, but in limiting it for others. My own judgment is that if we were to look at this thing selfishly we would permit of the giving of legal advice by everybody. We know, just as a doctor knows, that this or that patent medicine is not going to cure the child.

BAR DISCIPLINE.

The Conference received a great deal of interesting information from Mr. Einar Chrystie, who, for the past 18 years, has had charge of the work, for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, of cleaning up the profession.

The Association has spent over $10,000 a year to maintain this bureau for investigation and prosecution. It represents a development of grievance committee work to the point of creating an efficient machine and providing money for its operation. A great deal of the supervision is voluntary, but in a large city salaried workers of high ability are essential to success.

Mr. Chrystie.

I will take a few minutes to tell you how in my opinion this work can be most effectively done. In the first place, you must

have committees made up of men who are both able and willing to do the work. They must be free from political entanglement. They must be willing to devote the requisite amount of time to investigate complaints which come before them. Having obtained such a committee, the next important thing is to establish cooperation with the court that has in charge the disciplining of attorneys, because with the cooperation of the court very much good can be accomplished and more quickly. Then, too, you must have the cooperation of the Bar. We must get away from the idea of brotherly love among attorneys preventing them from telling about an erring brother.

One day I met a lawyer on the street who complained bitterly of another lawyer whose practice he termed as scandalous and said that he was going to appear before the committee and endeavor to have him disbarred. Six or eight months later I met the same man and I spoke of what he had said, and asked him about the case. He said, "Oh, I beat the scalawag in the suit that we had, and he paid up, so what is the use of my doing anything to him now?" You see, that prevents the good work that some others are trying to do. If the average attorney would only deem it a part of his duty to expose a scalawag, it would make it much easier for us to clean up the Bar.

Now, having the cooperation of the Bar, the next thing you want is men who can devote the necessary time to investigate cases, and do the detail work that follows. Sometimes that detail is of such nature that the average volunteer worker hesitates to undertake it. For that reason I believe that bar associations that have the funds ought to pay for services rendered by men who do that work.

The work of the average Grievance Committee should not be confined to prosecuting delinquents. It is just as important to satisfy the public of the fact that if they have any complaint to make they will be investigated, and if they are unfounded they will be told so. It is important to explain to a man the reason why what he has complained of is in fact not justified.

When you take into consideration the fact that we receive 850 complaints a year, and, after we get through investigating them there are about 25 cases in which action is taken by the court, you can realize that there are a lot of disappointed complainants.