J. D. B. News Letter

(By Our Kovno Correspondent)

Should the new law on which the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice is said to have been working for several months past become actual law, the future of the Jewish aspirants to a legal career in this republic will look very gloomy, if any future career should still be possible altogether under such conditions. There is a well founded rumor among the law students of the Lithuanian State University in Kovno that the new law aims to restrict the number of peple entering the legal profession in general, but the present writer has been able to learn that the real object of the new measure is to restrict as much as possible the quota of Jewish law students.

Under the existing law, it has been quite easy to enter the legal profession in Lithuania. In the first place, there is the fact that the curriculum at the law department of the University is much less exacting than many other curricula at the same institution of learning. After obtaining his diploma, any graduate of the law department was able to enter the profession, upon complying with a few easy formalities. After serving for seven and a half years as “Assistant Lawyer,” he could at once become a full-fledged member of the Bar. Under the new scheme, however, this is to be made far more difficult. It is planned that in addition to the diploma of the university, each applicant for membership in the profession shall be required to do practical legal work for a term of 2-3 years in some court, and this without any pecuniary compensation. The only compensation to be granted for this work shall be the reducation of the term of practice as assistant lawyer from seven and a half to some shorter term of years.

Officially, the justification of this new arrangement is the following: The curriculum of the law department of the Lithuanian State University lays far too much stress upon purely theoretical knowledge and neglects actual practice. The diploma of the graduate cannot, therefore, be regarded as sufficient proof of adequate professional preparation for work in the law courts. In Germany and France, for example, the applicant for membership in the legal profession is required to pass through a certain amount of practice before admission. In Germany, for instance, every lawyer is required not only to have done three years work at the law school, but also three years practical work in some law court, and here, too, he is expected to pass certain examinations known as “Referendar-Pruefung” and “Assessor-Pruefung.” In France, too, they must do practical work in some law office and then pass examinations in the subjects practiced. Naturally enough, the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice is able to meet all objections by pointing to such examples in these two countries.

Another justification cited for the new measure is the apparent overproduction of lawyers in this little republic. The natural desire of any professional class to reduce competition to a minimum prevails also among the members of the legal profession in this country, and it is pointed out that about 30 per cent of the entire student body at the State University is to be found in the law department. The annual output of law graduates is about 100, and whilst about one half of this number enter some government institution other than legal, the rest of the graduates swell the ranks of the legal profession.

This influx of new lawyers would not be so serious a problem, it is said, if the distribution would be better than it has been heretofore. There is still enough room for lawyers outside of Kovno, in other parts of Lithuania. The trouble is that most of the new members of the profession prefer to remain in the capital, of course, where the highest law institutions of the country are situated and practice is more convenient for this and many other reasons easy to understand. The consequence has been, it is alleged, that harmful competition has been created in the ranks of the profession at the capital, harmful not only to the pecuniary interests of the older members of the Bar, but tending also to lower the prestige of the profession generally, as the lawyers of Kovno are forced to take all opportunites that may present themselves, without looking too closely at the ethics of the profession.

Such are the official and semi-official expalnations of the proposed law. But there is still one other expalnation, and this one, it is quite safe to say, is the most plausible and obvious one, and it lits perfectly into the general trend of recent Lithuanian measures directed against Jewish competition. This explanation is that it is proposed to eliminate at one stroke practically all Jews from the study of jurisprudence at the Lthuania State University. However the new law may affect the careers of Lithuanian law students, it is certain that it will make the stuy of law practically useless to Jewish stuents, and this is the real object of the new law.

Scanning the lists of practising lawyers in Kovno for January 1, 1928, we observe that 13 out of the 62 are Jewish, that is to say, about 20 per cent. But when we glance at the roster of assistant lawyers, we find that are more than 50 per cent Jews among them. These figures are highly instructive. This ratio between Jews and non-Jews is by no means accidental: at a time when a majority of non-Jewish lawyers are occupying responsible posts in the law courts and in the administration the Jewish jurists, having no opportunity to enter these institutions, were forced to seek their livelihood in legal practice elsewhere. This preponderance of Jews in the profession, however, is against the tastes of their non-Jewish colleagues, and there can be no doubt wheatever that this is the real motive behind the new scheme of restriction.

As it will take 7 instead of 4 years, under the new law, to reach the stage at which one may enter the legal fraternity, it is clear that no poor Jew–and that means nearly every Jew–in Lithuania will be able to afford the expense of waiting so many years before earning his living in his chosen profession. In this manner we are faced with what amounts in practice to a complete, unmitigated Jewish “Numerus Clausus.”