Every man a lawyer? Entry to the New Zealand Legal Profession through the Law Professional Examinations 1895- 1925

“Every man a lawyer? Entry to the New Zealand Legal
Profession through the Law Professional Examinations 1895-
                          1925”

                                Jeremy Finn,
                              Professor of Law,
                            University of Canterbury
           Paper presented at ANZLHS conference, Adelaide, 2008.

Abstract
In the years 1895-1925 would-be lawyers could qualify for admission to the
New Zealand legal profession either by passing University courses for the
LLB, or by passing the Law Professional Examinations or, for some of the
period, a mixture of both. Despite the fact it seems the Law Professional
examinations attracted more than twice as many candidates as did the LLB,
there has been no study of the operation of the Law Professional qualification,
little consideration of its interaction with the LLB and none of the extent to
which those so qualified joined the legal profession.
This paper explores these issues, and also considers why the Law
Professional examination has received so little attention from legal historians.
It is a “work in progress” as a part of a larger study of these questions.
The paper will also outline the rush to study law, in which people seeking to
qualify for entry to the legal profession were often the component of those
studying at or examined by the University of New Zealand.

A. Introduction
We may start with some fairly familiar points. In New Zealand from about
1880 until, effectively, 1940 would-be lawyers could choose between
university study or seeking to pass, by private study or tuition in a University,
sufficient courses in the Professional Examinations in Law. For those
attending university the completion of the LLB degree entitled admission as a
barrister and solicitor, though passing a smaller list of LLB courses was
sufficient for admission as a solicitor.

The alternative route through the Law Professional Examinations (“LPE”) also
required the passing of a series of compulsory courses for admission as a
solicitor. Candidates could also take a different set of examinations to qualify
for admission as a barrister, though few took the latter option. The LPE were
instituted as a pragmatic way of exercising the powers of the Judges of the
Supreme Court (under the Law Practitioners Act 1861 and successor
legislation) to examine candidates for admission as a barrister and/or solicitor
of the Supreme Court. That system did not work; its shortcomings have been

chronicled by other writers.1 Not least of the problems was its inability to cope
with increasing numbers of applicants, even after the LLB was recognized as
a qualification for admission from 1877.

The result was an agreement in 1888 under which the University of New
Zealand (“the University”) would conduct the LPE in parallel with its own LLB
examining. The initiative for this appears to have come from the university
rather than the judges, with discussions beginning as early as 1880.
Why did the University want to take on this role? It appears that the major
reason was financial. The examining function brought with it a substantial
volume of fees paid by students to enter the examination. In 1898 the
University recorded the transfer of examining as having occurred at the
request of the Judges, though this may be because it was trying to justify a
significant increase in examination fees, alleging the University was recouping
only half its costs from Law Professional candidates.2 If this was so, the
position must have improved later as numbers grew.

By 1909, the fees from examinations for LLB students and Law Professional
candidates had reached £1,000 - more than an eighth of the University’s
“ordinary account” income. (The only larger income items were £3,063 from
Matriculation and Scholarship examination fees and £1500 from the
Government).3 That figure seems broadly representative of the period. The
financial rewards of a popular Law Professional system may go far toward
explaining the University’s unwillingness to protect the LLB, and the law
departments, from competition.

B Why Choose the Law Professional route?
There were three good reasons for many students to opt for the LPE rather
than the LLB (or, as we will see, in later years to combine at least some LPE
subjects with study at a University.

(i) Cost
Firstly, it was for much of the period we are looking at significantly cheaper for
students to take LPE than an LLB. There was no requirement of enrolment at
any institution and thus there was a saving on the College and University fees
otherwise payable. It appears the examination fees for the LPE were lower
than those for LLB subjects. In 1895, the fee for the LPE was 2 guineas; that for
the LLB exams 3 guineas (the Barristers professional examination fee was 5
guineas).4 The disparity remained after the 1898 increases- which essentially

1 The two most useful works on the early legal profession are Brian Coote “Qualifications for
Admission to the Legal Profession in New Zealand: A Brief History” (1996) 17 NZULR 140;
and Peter Spiller “The History of New Zealand Legal Education: A study in ambivalence”
(1993) 4 Legal Education Review 223-254 (largely repeated in Spiller, Finn and Boast, A New
Zealand Legal History pp263-269). Both writers are influenced by Michael Cullen, Lawfully
Occupied, the Centennial History of the Otago Law Society (Dunedin, Otago District Law
Society, 1979).
2 For the transfer of examinations from the judges see Minutes of the Senate of the University
of New Zealand (“MSUNZ”) 16 February 1881, and February 1898.
3 The financial data for 1908-09 is derived from MSUNZ April 1909.
4 MSUNZ 1895, p 61.

required a candidate for the LPE to pay the full two guineas whether attempting
all or only a few subjects, but was reduced in 1904 when LLB fees were
lowered slightly. In the 1920s, when University fees were significantly
increased, there may have again been some significant differential.

(ii) No attendance requirement
For many students, the great advantage of the LPE was that it could be taken
when resident and working in a provincial town away from a University campus.
This was certainly important in practice for some students. The records of the
LPE do not always indicate where candidates were based so it is not possible
to determine how many of the many LPE students were in fact from the
provinces, and how many lived close to university colleges but, for one reason
or another, did not pursue studies there. In the War years 1915-1919 the
distribution of successful candidates is given, with students sitting LPE
examinations in eight North Island provincial centres, and three South Island
ones. However in every such year the numbers sitting in each of Wellington
and Auckland equaled or exceeded those in the North island provincial towns;
the South island university centres were generally in the same position in
relation to the provinces in that island.

The data for the 1920s does not usually allow us to be certain of the geographic
spread. In 1923, a rare exception, candidates sat in five South Island smaller
centres, and 18 North Island provincial towns. In that year, unlike the war years,
the total number of provincial candidates in the North Island significantly
outnumbered the University centres (49 provincial, 22 Auckland and only 10 in
Wellington); with the 29 South island candidates being spread over
Christchurch (11), Dunedin (7) and the provincial towns (11).

It is not clear whether this means that more ‘university city’ students were
attending University to study for the LLB than in the past, or whether the war-
time data is skewed by candidates sitting away from their home centres
because of wartime commitments.

It is important to note that until at least the 1920s throughout this period there
was little or no perception that extra-mural study was intrinsically inferior to
attending courses on campus. In the 1890s, many LLB students were enrolled
extramurally – some simply because there were no law lectures in
Wellington.5 Even in the 1920s, when attendance was in theory compulsory,
exemption from lectures was reasonably readily granted.

In the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, an extramural student was
likely to have the problem that most textbooks were written entirely for an
English audience. From 1902 on a flow of books authored by New Zealanders
must have significantly eased their tasks. These books included Salmond’s
Jurisprudence, and the works of James Garrow and others on Criminal Law,
Conveyancing, the Land Transfer Act and Civil Procedure.

5Several early Canterbury LLB graduates spent all their law degree years working in
Wellington or Auckland – including Apirana Ngata, the Law Department’s first Maori student.
See Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol 3, p 359.

We do have one datum which indicates that there was a very real concern in
many provincial centres that attendance at University might be made
compulsory for all law students. In 1930,when Parliament was debating
legislation to establish a Council of Legal Education (an issue considered more
fully below) the Statutes Revision Committee of the House of Representatives
inserted a provision which would have forbidden the University from requiring
anyone seeking to study law for the LLB or LPE to attend the University. The
Legislative Council was not prepared to agree to this amendment, taking the
view that candidates living in or close to a University city should be attending
university courses. The House initially insisted on a complete ban on any
attendance requirement. William Barnard (MHR for Napier) argued that going to
University “would be out of the question for the many law students who reside
in the smaller towns or in the backblocks”, a view unanimously shared by the
MHRs from rural constituencies and country towns, all of whom insisted that
young men (no-one mentioned young women!) who could not afford to go to
University should not be prevented from following a legal career. The
Legislative Council was also strong in its views, and in the end a negotiated
compromise was reached by which the University was barred from require
attendance for any person resident more than 10 miles from a University
college or who or “being engaged in acquiring a profession or trade, or earning
a livelihood, is in the opinion of the Minister of Education thereby prevented
from attending lectures”.6

(3) A lesser standard
There were two different issues here.
The first is that throughout or period the requirements for admission as a
barrister were more onerous than those for admission as a solicitor.
Completion of the full LLB (or equivalent subjects in LPE) was required for
admission as a barrister; those seeking admission as a solicitor on the basis of
university study did not have to pass the Arts requirements of the LLB degree,
nor be credited with International Law, Conflict of Laws, Jurisprudence and
Constitutional Law. One critical point here was the LLB required a pass in
stage 1 Latin, something which delayed, or defeated, may would-be barristers.
Others, who had been to the favoured schools where Latin was emphasised, or
who had already completed BA degrees where Latin was required, (as many
pre-War LLB students had done)7 found the subject less arduous.
As other authors have noted – and critics of the LPE regularly condemned - in
1888 Parliament amended the Law Practitioners Act to permit the admission as
a barrister of any solicitors who had been in continuous practice for at least five
years - without passing any further examinations at all. This provision – referred
to slightingly as the “back door” method of becoming a barrister, was not
repealed until 1942.

6 Debate was on two linked bills, the New Zealand University Amendment Bill 1930 and the
Law Practitioners Amendment Bill 1930. For the amendment, see Apirana Ngata (1930) 226
NZPD 219 (30 September 1930). There is a significant debate later on the limitation point,
see (1930) 226 NZPD 862-865 (17 October 1930). Barnard’s words are at p863. For the
negotiated compromise see (1930) 226 NZPD 1104.
7 For example, 8 of 11 LLB graduates from Canterbury in 1907-08 already had MA degrees.

While the ‘back-door” was in theory open to both solicitors who had attended
university students and to those qualifying through the LPE, it has always
been assumed that the latter group were more likely to use it. Research has
to date not determined whether that assumption is correct.

There is, however, good reason to believe that generally the standard
required to pass the various sections of the Law Professional examinations
was initially significantly lower than that required for a pass in an equivalent
university subject. This was particularly so in relation to Latin. One measure of
the disparity is that in 1890, the University resolved that passes in the
Solicitor’s Professional Examination be awarded with or without credit. A
student passing any course with credit would be exempt that course if he or
she later enrolled for a law degree.

The discrepancy may have been lessened in the 1890s. In 1893, for example,
a higher proportion of LPE students passed some or all of their subjects than
was the case for LLB students; in 1895 the proportions were reversed.

C Breaking down the LLB / LPE distinction
The requirement of a credit pass in the LPE examination before credit was
given for the subject toward the LLB was removed in 1904, thus allowing
students to credit to the LLB all courses passed for the Law Professional
examination courses.

An unexpected and extremely important, side-effect of this was to allow
students to try to complete their law qualifications much more quickly. The
Rector of the University reported in 1906 that the changes to allow the
granting of credit had essentially rendered ineffective the LLB regulations
which required three LLB “examinations” to be taken a year apart, and which
ordered the LLB subjects differently from those for the LPE:
       “The Third, either in entirety or in sections, is now taken freely with
       the First or Second, or at any stage of the course. If any technical
       objection is raised to this, it is met by entering for the Third as for
       Law Professional. The concessions have, perhaps, been more far-
       reaching than was anticipated; but if they are to stand they must be
       followed out to their logical conclusions.”

The Senate made some attempt to rectify matters, amending the rules to
require in all cases at least a year’s interval between the First and Second
LLB exams, but allowing candidates who failed the Final examination in
November of any year to sit, entirely at their own costs, a repeat examination
in May the following year.

From 1905, then, we can say the line between Law Professional candidates
and LLB students was significantly blurred, because would-be lawyers could,
and evidently some did, take courses toward each qualification simultaneously,
with the object of assembling enough passes to gain admission.

The blurring of the distinction in 1904-5 was carried much further in 1907 as a
result of further changes to the LLB rules. In that year the University re-
structured the LLB into two divisions. The “Second” Division comprised seven
Law courses - Law of Contracts; Law or Property I and II; Torts, Criminal Law,
Evidence and Procedure. These seven courses were sufficient to entitle any
student who had matriculated at the University to be admitted as a solicitor.
(Those who had not matriculated had to pass further examinations in
“Solicitors’ General Knowledge” and other non-law courses.)

The “first” Division contained another seven papers, all required for admission
as a barrister. Three were taught outside the Law departments - Latin ; English
or Mental Science (Psychology) and Constitutional History. The other four were
Jurisprudence; Roman Law, International Law and Conflict of Laws. The
decision to arrange the courses in this manner may have, in part, reflected the
fact the four law courses in this division were, at this time, all examined by
examiners in England or (occasionally) Australia.

After 1907 candidates could readily take the same subjects as LPE or LLB
courses, and indeed there seems to have been no difference in the
examination papers or examiners. The results were generally reported to, and
by, the University as “Second Division and Law Professional”, something
which makes analysis of enrolment patterns very problematic.

It also clearly established that a similar standard was being applied to all
candidates. That standard was sometimes exacting – even brutal - by modern
standards. In 1893 only three of 13 candidates passed the LLB second
examination. In 1915, admittedly a year when candidates were affected by
military service and their studies disrupted, only 113 of 293 candidates
passed any LPE courses.

The harshness of the regime was modified somewhat by the provision, dating
as we have seen formally from 1906 but probably not in operation for some
years8, of “special” examinations to allow students to complete the Second
Division. Under this system – which applied in effectively identical terms to
LLB and LPE students - a candidate who failed one or two subjects in the
November examination and needed only those subjects to complete the
Second Division could sit a supplementary examination, provided he or she
had scored 60% of whatever pass-mark had been set for the subjects in
question. The student would sit only the subjects failed in November – and so
could not attempt a new subject – except that a student who had taken only
two subjects in November and passed one of them had to re-sit both in March
– with the possibility of failure removing credit.9 Students affected by illness in
the November examination could be permitted to take the March examination
as well.

8 The first list of successful Special Examination candidates is in MSUNZ 1911 relating to
March 1910.
9 This is taken from the UNZ Calendar 1922-23, p110 and 121. Essentially identical
provisions are to be found for some years, though the original form of the regulation
underwent some changes 1906-1910.

The numbers taking the “special” examinations were substantial. In 1912,
there were 13 recorded – 10 of whom were credited with three subjects and
therefore may have been “illness” candidates. The largest numbers sitting
special examinations come from the War and post-War years. Some of this
may reflect concessions made to ex-servicemen, but if so this is not officially
reflected in the University calendars. Whatever the cause, the number of
“specials” was high. Almost 50 candidates were credited with subjects taken
in March 1919. The numbers however do not appear – records are incomplete
– to have dropped back much as a similar number, 49 candidates were
credited with passing special examinations in 1925, well after any ex-
servicemen bulge.

D. The numbers
There exists no reliable study of the numbers of law students following the
LLB or the law professional routes to admission; and after 1904 the issue is
complicated because a number followed both paths at times so as to qualify
more quickly or easily. Peter Spiller has opined that it was ‘the norm’ for
solicitors to take only the LPE in the years before the First World War; Coote
says of the 1920s that very few University law students were pursuing the
LLB. Neither statement seems entirely accurate; at the least each needs
significant qualification. Certainly neither gives us any real indication of the
scale of the enrolment for the LPE, or of the nature of student pathways to
admission to the profession.

This is not surprising. The data available – mainly those in the Minutes of the
Senate of the University – are presented in different forms which do not allow
for easily calculation and comparison. Further, as noted elsewhere, from
about 1905, many students enrolled for some subjects for one qualification
and others for the alternative.

The following table indicates the patterns of enrolment, but the 1921 figure, in
particular, may contain an element of double-counting.

Table 1 LLB and LPE examination candidates over time
Group          1891 1896 1901 1906 1911 1921
LLB            20    33    57      80*             267
LLB First                                  161
Division
LLB Second                                 421
Div and LPE
LPE            14    118 142       260             668

NOTE: In 1906 there was a change in the recording of data so that this figure
may exclude students taking Arts courses for the LLB who were apparently
counted in earlier years.

As may be expected the numbers dropped away during World War I, as most
young men were in the armed forces, but as the table shows, the numbers of

law candidates in the post-war years climbed to even greater heights, with
over 900 sitting law examinations in 1921, and an astonishing 1,060 in 1922.
No comparable reliable data for later years has yet been discovered.

As noted above, Brian Coote has suggested that very few university Law
students in the 1920s were actually sitting the LLB examinations and that in
the mid-1920s:
      “for the great majority of candidates, law was a two- year course
      of seven subjects, taught largely by part-time teachers to part-
      time candidates”.10

The data relied on for this observation is not clear, as it does not appear to
accord with the data as it appears in MSUNZ. The format of the information
makes comparison difficult, but that for 1925 suggests successful LLB
students at Auckland heavily outnumbered the successful LPE candidates. Of
course, that tells us nothing of how many unsuccessful LPE candidates there
were. Nor is it easy to tell how many LPE candidates there were from other
centres for whom Coote’s description might be accurate

Coote’s statement would not appear to be true for Canterbury College either.
In 1925 there were 37 LLB students who passed some or all of their courses –
and an unknown number who passed none – but only 12 students in the
Christchurch area passed Law Professional courses. Two years later there
were 59 successful or partially successful LLB students and only eight Law
Professional students, and in 1929 a mere four Law Professional students are
recorded as passing courses, as against 58 LLB students. The number of LLB
students fell sharply in the 1930s, perhaps largely as economic conditions
made law a less attractive career prospect. On slight analysis – and pending
further investigation – it appears that a high proportion of LLB students did go
on to complete the degree.

It is possible Coote is correct in suggesting a majority of matriculated students
did only the seven law courses in the Second Division; whether this was a
‘great majority’ may be doubted. Future research may clarify this.

Part E Altering the System: the 1925 Royal Commission and after
The Canterbury data may perhaps be taken as indicating some kind of culture
shift in the late 1920s. There may have been such a shift, but it is not clear
why or how it occurred. One possibility – considered further below – is that
simply the numbers of lawyers had risen to a point where the profession no
longer appeared to offer young men and women much prospect of
employment and success, and so they moved to other fields.

It has been traditional to explain the history of the legal education as largely
reconstructed as a result of the Report of the 1925 Royal Commission on
University Education. The Commissioners’ discussion of Law was relatively
brief, but it was severely critical of the standard of legal education. The

10   Coote, op cit, p142 and p148 (from which the quotation is taken).

governmental responses to the report are usually said to include the creation
of the Council of Legal Education in 1930, as the Commission recommended
such a body. If the Commission report was the decisive factor, it is curious
that it is mentioned not at all in any of the parliamentary debates on the
relevant legislation. Instead the new institution is simply put forward as a
body which would give expert advice to the University and to create parity with
other profession such as the engineers.

The Commissioners began their discussion of legal education by noting the
very high number of law students in New Zealand:
       “The figures for 1924 show that in the four University colleges there
       were 586 students attending law courses out of a population of
       1,300,000. For the same year in New South Wales, with a
       population of 2,200,000, there were only 333 law students; and in
       Victoria, with a population of 1,600,000, there were only 285.”

The derivation of the New Zealand statistics is not entirely clear, and they do
not seem to square with the data reported in University records. It seems
probable that the Commissioners were counting not only students enrolled for
the LLB degree, but also those individuals attending University while enrolled
only for LPE courses.

The Commission was clear about its view of the New Zealand position. It
stated bluntly that there were far too many would-be lawyers completing a
substandard qualification – to the point, as the Report noted, that the state of
Victoria refused to recognise the New Zealand professional qualifications in
law as entitling admission in that jurisdiction, though more concessions were
given to LLB graduates than to those with the solicitor’s professional
qualification. The Commission concluded that professional standards had
been diluted. One paragraph of the Report has often been quoted:
        “Legal practitioners have always been regarded as members of a
        learned profession as, indeed, is shown by the customary courtesy of
        allusion to “my learned friend.” It appears to us that, unless a marked
        change is effected in the legal education provided in the Dominion, this
        term runs the risk of being regarded as a delicate sarcasm.”11

This has usually been seen as an indictment of University education in law.
This may not be so. An alternative, perhaps somewhat revisionist, reading of
the Commission’s report, and of the process by which it was reached,
suggests the real focus of this part of the report was a successful attempt to
attack the LPE process.

The Commissioners heard a range of evidence from members of the
profession, law teachers and others within the University who appear largely
to have agreed that legal education required a basis of general academic
education and preparedness, a sound theoretical knowledge of the principles
of law and experience in their practical application. The witnesses – and the
Commission – considered that the current system failed to ensure that

11   Report of the Royal Commission 1925 (RRC), p44.

entrants to the profession were adequately prepared in any of these fields.
The Commissioners, and the witnesses, seem to have taken for granted the
conclusion that those who completed the LLB degree had acquired both the
general education and the theoretical command of law required. They all
focussed instead on the question of practical training and experience. The
Commissioners accepted, almost as an indisputable fact, that the LLB degree
could not be taught to fulltime students – “Law and Commerce require
practical experience”12 and indeed the Commission recommended the Law
Practitioners Act be amended to make practical training and experience in a
law office a requirement for entry into the profession. The Commission was
concerned that many law students were in government departments where
they might not be exposed to any significant legal practice. “There are very
special and peculiar advantages which only the practitioner’s office can
supply.” The remedy recommended – of reintroducing a system of articles -
was probably never likely to be accepted but the fact it was made reflects the
reactionary nature of much of this part of the Report. The Commisisoenrs
also considered that students should not be able to progress too quickly, and
there should be limits on the number of subjects for which they might enrol in
any one year.

Most of the criticism, by witnesses and the commissioners alike, of the
standards required for admission was directed at the LPE which were
criticised as allowing entry to the profession to men and women with only a
“more or less empirical knowledge of the technique of practice in the various
branches of the profession, superimposed upon a slender equipment of
general knowledge and of principles”. The witnesses before the Commission
paraded their complaints about the LPE candidates -– the students were too
young and inexperienced in life; they had inadequate earlier education; they
were ignorant of the traditions or ethics of the profession – and they
undertook too many law courses to master their content yet passed them by
rote learning rather than mastery of the content. As not one of the witnesses
had qualified by way of the professional examinations, their certainty as to its
standard is more than a little suspect.

The question of the standards of examining of the professional examinations
– a task performed under the University’s supervision and, as we have seen,
to the same standard as for LLB candidates – was somehow delicately
avoided.

We may look behind the criticisms and note some salient matters:
Firstly, the Commission was largely trespassing outside its terms of reference
in commenting on the LPE at all. It did not hear from any lawyers who had
qualified through that process, nor did it hear from the Judges, whose function
the University was nominally exercising.

Secondly the witnesses were unlikely to be truly impartial. The university
teachers would clearly have preferred to see all law students take the full
degree course. The representatives of the Law Society may have been

12   RRC, p20.

genuinely concerned with the standard of entrants to the profession, but were
also likely to have been concerned that the flow of new solicitors would
undermine the established firms. More particularly, the witnesses heard
appear to have been concerned to reassert a special and superior status for
barristers within the profession, a status which would be better assured by the
requirement of graduation with an LLB.

The Commission was perhaps sensitive to a possibility that its
recommendations could be seen as making entry to the procession too
difficult for the talented but poor, saying that the there were sufficient “free
places’ and scholarships available that a university degree was possible for
“any young man or young woman of ability who is prepared to make a
reasonable sacrifice”.13 The Commission’s data does give support to this
view, as it showed that 31% of Law students held scholarships or bursaries
entitling them to free university tuition,14 a figure very close to the 30% of such
students in the general “evening students” category. With earnings from
employment as a law clerk – or better paid work in a Government department
– and considerable self-discipline, such students could probably manage to
complete their degree without much familial support. However at that time, as
indeed was true both earlier and later, students from the more affluent
classes were clearly advantaged.

As noted, the Council recommended the establishment of a Council of Legal
Education “representative of the Judges, the leaders among practising
barristers and solicitors, and the university teachers of law” on the model of a
similar body in Victoria. Such a body was stated to be best placed to ensure
legal education combined a sufficient degree of academic rigour with
sufficient practical training. This part of the report seems almost entirely in line
with the suggestions presented by Law Society witnesses. What it
undoubtedly did do was to move much of the control of legal education from
the University to the legal profession, a matter which may have much more to
do with control of entry to the profession than with the standard of legal
education itself.

It is certainly interesting and suggestive that the Attorney-General, when
moving the legislation to establish the CLE, could note that several District
Law Societies had argued that the University’s Academic Board should have
no power to deal with law issues, but that this view had not prevailed.15

Part F: recruitment to the profession
One feature of the decades under consideration here is the remarkable
growth of the number of lawyers. In 1896 there were 524 solicitor’s practising
certificates issued nationally. The number had risen to 603 in 1901 and to 710
in 1905.16 These numbers, of course, omit those practising as barristers sole.
The census figure for barristers and solicitors in 1901 was 636, so the 33

13 RRC, p46
14 RRC, p 98.
15 [1930] 225 NZPD 416, 20 August 1930
16 Data from records of Secretary of the Wellington District Law Society, in WDLS archives.

difference between that figure and the solicitors' practicing certificates
probably reflects the number of barristers. In 1906, the census figure for
barristers and solicitors was 785, which suggests probably both a significant
number of new admissions between 1905 and 1906, and a continuing group
of 30+ barristers. We do not have a number of practising certificates for 1911,
but the census that year recorded 950 barristers or solicitors. This is almost
exactly a 50% increase in 10 years. In 1916 the number of barristers and
solicitors was 1125; a figure which appears to have included lawyers away
from New Zealand on military service.

Unfortunately the data for 1921 and 1926 (there was no census in 1931) is in
a different form which records all those engaged in the public practice of law,
including clerks, law firm employees and law students as well as barristers
and solicitors.

The census data also record two other significant groups of law-related
workers, the “Law clerk – not articled” and “Law student, articled clerk”. The
basis for the differentiation is not clear; it is evident that not all law student s-
not even all University law students – were included in the second category.
In 1901 there were 700 non-articled clerks, and 84 law students. In 1906 the
numbers were 848 and 109. Perhaps surprisingly the law student number
remained stable in 1911, though the non-articled clerks rose again sharply to
1183. In 1916 the non-articled clerks had dropped somewhat to 1084, and
the law students and articled clerks had dropped to 79. That may reflect a
cohort of young me simply not entering legal firms before war service.
In the 1926 census there appears a table of “Legal profession in public
practice” combining the former data. That data can be set out thus

Table 2 “Legal profession in public practice” 17
1906         1911          1916          1921                     1926
1740         2313          2989          3729                     3872

These numbers, imprecise and undifferentiated as they are, indicate that the
number of barristers and solicitors would not have risen greatly between 1921
and 1926.

As noted there was no census in 1931. The 1936 census gives yet another
different form of data, amalgamating all law employees and lawyers into a
single unit of 2531, but stating 1210 of those are “employers”. A further 159
are described as “own account” which may well be an indication of lawyers in
private practice as principals, which would suggest that with those who were
employee solicitors and those in government employ the number of
practitioners was somewhere over 1500, perhaps as many as 1700.
That number seems a reasonable estimate given that, according to a
memorandum prepared in the 1950s, there had been 1,765 lawyers with
practising certificates in 1930. (This at a time when New Zealand’s population
was about 1.5 million). Of these 1401 were in private practice as “principals”
(ie running their own law firms, partners in law firms or barristers sole). Of the

17   Source NZ Census report 1926 (NZ Department of Statistics)

remaining 364, 29 were employed by government departments. This data
means there was one practising lawyer for every 850 people in the general
population. In 1930, there had been 152 notices of admission to the
profession – or about one new lawyer for every 12 lawyers in practice.18

In sum, on a broad brush approach, it seems the number of lawyers in New
Zealand had roughly trebled between 1896 and 1936; with the largest growth
in numbers being between 1911 and 1926. Where had these lawyers come
form – clearly, on the university data, they were qualifying locally in large
numbers.

G Law vs other disciplines
This dramatic rise in the numbers seeking to qualify in law was not matched,
for most of the period we are concerned with, by comparable increases in
other disciplines examined by the University. Indeed it seems that for most of
the period discussed in this paper, Law was a major – almost the major -
academic and career field. This phenomenon has never been explored by
historians, and we may only guess at its causes and its influence on New
Zealand society.

Earlier in this paper there appears a table, Table 1, of LLB and LPE students
over time. Let us return to an extended form of that table, which includes
information about other qualifications:

Table 3 Other disciplines v LLB and LPE candidates over time
Group           1891 1896 1901 1906 1911 1921
UNZ internal    217 319 399          571    n/a     n/a
students
Arts            131 200 228          327    330     716
Science         7       20    21     28     37      176
Engineering*    -       6     25     33     13      n/a
Med & dent      24      56    65     92     137     368#
Music                   4     3      7      4       n/a
Total other 5   162 286 342          487    521     n/a
disciplines

LLB               20      33     57       80**             267
LLB First                                          161
Division
LLB Second                                         421
Div and LPE
LPE               14      118    142      260              668
LLB/LPE total     34      151    199      340      581     935

Commerce                                           718     1598

18
 1930 data from memorandum by Secretary NZ Law Society 1956, In CLE archives,
Wellington.

These figures must be treated with some caution as the Commerce figures, in
particular, appear to include qualifications not intended to be comparable to
degree courses or their equivalents. In 1911, the Commerce candidates
included 118 candidates for a ‘certificate of proficiency” in book-keeping. The
1921 figures include 332 taking the bookkeeping examination, and a further
197 taking a Diploma in banking. The remaining 1069 were taking some
courses toward the BCom or professional accounting qualifications.

After allowing for those issues, it is evident from the data shown in the table
that Law was a major discipline. Over recent decades the new Zealand
Universities have generally seen Law student numbers which are vastly below
those for Arts, science and Commerce. In the 1890s and early 20th century,
this was far from the case. For the whole of the period 1901-1921 law
candidates exceeded those for the BA; indeed in 1911 Law candidates
outnumbered all the other disciplines.

This is a remarkable phenomenon – not the less remarkable because it
seems hitherto to have been largely unrecorded and unstudied. Further
research is planned to explore the causes, and the effects, of this social and
educational phenomenon.

The other big question – of course – is why did it cease? The LPE numbers
appear to have fallen away drastically in the 1930s, and the LLB numbers to
have decline significantly as well. Why so? Possibly the CLE did manage to
raise academic standards for Law qualifications, to appoint which discouraged
some young women and men form seeking a legal career. The answer may
be simpler. As suggested earlier, it may be that the numbers of lawyers had
risen to a point where the profession no longer appeared to offer young men
and women much prospect of employment and success, and so they moved
to other fields.

Part H. Some concluding thoughts on the literature about lawyers
Why has so little been written about the LPE? There are two possible
answers, or part answers.

Firstly, most of what has been written has been written by legal academics
who tend to look to the development of doctrine – of rules, regulations and
amendments – rather than to any quantative analysis. In the case of the LPE,
the data, or at least the bulk of it and the manner it is set out – would put off
many researchers. Social historians may simply not have seen the education
of lawyers as likely to be interesting.

The other possibility, which needs to be explored more generally in
considering writing about the legal profession, is that there may be a kind of
class bias among those writing about lawyers and legal education. I suggest
that if we look at what writing there is, we will find that barristers are accorded
very much higher importance than are solicitors - both as lawyers and as
writers about the legal profession.

This possibly partly a bias inherited from England, where the distinction is
perhaps even more pronounced – probably because the profession is so
much more divided. Generally in England barristers were University educated;
middle or even upper-class while solicitors were, until well into the 20th
century much more likely to be working class or lower middle class; and
educated at less prestigious institutions.

Barristers generate many more published autobiographies than do solicitors –
perhaps the more so because the most common legal autobiographies are by
judges – most of whom spent much of their careers primarily practising as
barristers. Few indeed are solicitors. Biographies of lawyers are even more
heavily weighted to judges or barristers – especially to those where the
narrative can be embellished with dramatic accounts of courtroom duels with
other lawyers or of forensic brilliance in cross-examination.

It is much harder to write about individual solicitors whose professional lives
are less dramatic, less public – and much more constrained by issues of
confidentiality toward their clients. (We do, however, get collective accounts of
firms of solicitors – for which there is no barristerial equivalent).

How does this impact on studies f the legal profession? Simply – most writers
where previous writers have gone – they look at a literature weighted toward
barristers – and consciously or unconsciously construct an account which is
also weighted toward the judiciary and barristers.
Most of these writers are either barristers themselves – or they are University
academics. In either case they have a natural tendency to regard the
University educated barristers as the epitome of lawyers – which, as in New
Zealand, leaves the vast mass of the legal profession largely out of the
picture. Historians can and should do better.