where the Court excoriated a systematic "follow-up" solicitation of business, and reasserted the dignity of our profession. and the fact that propriety of conduct is not to be measured merely by failure to act contrary to express statutory prohibitions.

"The Committee has had the amusing pleasure of studying a little four-page auto-encomium of a member of the Illinois Bar, professing special aptitude, giving his name and address with an eagle rampant on a field azure over two American flags couchant. None the less, he asserts that he is 100 per cent American.

"A photograph, approximately passport size, adorns the inner page. A narrative, entitled Something about Him' gives his life history in compact phraseology. The phrase 'he should know the law of (his specialty)

well' comes with a slight shock, like the faint praise that damns - but one is lifted anew to heights of confidence by the enumeration of professional affiliations," i. e., 'American Bar Association, Illinois Bar Association, Chicago Bar Association, Chicago Law Institute,' not to mention a supplemental schedule of his social memberships and war activities.

"He refers to a list of authoritative organizations Leaving all at liberty to reply to any inquiry uninfluenced.'"

Your Committee is of the opinion that a document of so intimate a nature, should be most strictly limited in its circulation to persons to whom the advertiser already sustains personal professional relations. Its indiscriminate use in any other way not thus warranted might tend to expose the attorney, his profession and the Association of the Bar with which he claims affiliation to unseemly ridicule or even contempt. In conclusion, we respectfully make the usual recommendation, that our Committee be continued.

Then I offer the following personal resolution:

Resolved, That the Committee on Legal Ethics be requested to bring to the attention of the Court of Appeals so much of this report as relates to Committees on Character, together with such information as may be available as to the operation of such Committees in the First and Second Departments, for such action in respect to the rules of the Court of Appeals as it may be willing to make.

The President:

The first question will be with respect to the receiving and filing of the report.

D. B. Lucey, of Ogdensburg:

I move that the report be received and filed and the Committee continued.

The motion was duly seconded and carried.

The President:

I suppose that immediate action may also be taken upon the resolution proposed by Mr. Jessup.

Is the adoption of that resolution seconded?

The resolution was duly seconded and adopted.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON LEGAL ETHICS

To the New York State Bar Association:

The following report is respectfully submitted:

I

The Association, at its 1918 meeting, referred to this Committee a resolution transmitted from the Conference of Bar Associations, held at Saratoga in the fall of 1917. (See min

utes of N. Y. S. B. Assn., 1918, pp. 232, 234, 235.) The resolution reads as follows:

Resolved, That this Conference recommends to state and local bar associations that they systematically endeavor (1) to aid in the elevation of the standards of the profession by evolving effectual methods for the ascertainment of the moral character of the applicants for admission;

(2) The instruction of applicants and practitioners in proper ethical standards;

(3) The adoption of adequate disciplinary steps for the purging of the Bar of unfit practitioners, and for the suppression of unlawful and unauthorized practices."

Mr. Danaher, as a sub-committee, gave this matter careful consideration and made a report thereon to the Committee.

(1) It is obvious that a scrutiny of an applicant in respect to character, in limine, is a great safeguard of subsequent professional integrity. The appointment of a Committee on Character, familiar to the Bar in the first and second departments, has justified itself amply. It warrants the recommendation that all the Appellate Divisions be directed, by statute, or by order of the Court of Appeals, to appoint such Committees, with the duty of personally examining all applicants for admission with adequate power to secure extraneous evidence of the candidate's fitness to enter the profession.

Judge Leventritt has demonstrated how kindliness and thoroughness may work together for good in this threshold scrutiny.

We think it worth while to incorporate in this report in this connection the following action of a Southern court, noted in the New York Law Journal last April, illustrating the value of "character" scrutiny:

(ADMISSION TO THE BAR - CHARACTER

QUALIFICATIONS)

In a proceeding entitled In re Bowers, in the Supreme Court of Tennessee (February, 1918, 200 S. W., 821), it was laid down that a man of mature years who, although of good general reputation, had solicited business for a member of the Bar and, on being remonstrated with by other lawyers, devised a form of power of attorney whereby the prospective litigant employed him as attorney in fact and agreed to pay 50 per cent of whatever amount should be realized, should not be admitted to practice law. The following is from the opinion:

The board reports that the evidence shows that Mr. Bowers is a man of good general reputation, but it is of opinion, after an examination of the testimony, that he has failed to conceive the nature of the duties of an attorney, and has no proper conception of the ethics of the profession, and for those reasons the board is of opinion, and so certifies to this court, that he should not be admitted to practice law.

'We concur with the board in its statement that the ideals of the legal profession must be kept to the highest mark, and that its members must have a proper conception of the ethics of the profession and must be required to live up to those standards. The reasons for this requirement have been stated in many cases in this court, and the canons of legal ethics have been formulated by the practitioners. themselves. There is something more than mere sentiment in professional ethics, as there is something more than a proper administration of the law. One who fails to live up to the ethics of his profession is likely to break down morally when great pressure is placed upon him. He may have a high standing in his community in all other respects, but failure to live up to the ethics of his profession indicate a latent defect of character.

“In addition, lawyers have been aptly termed the 'unbound agents of society.' Matters of the greatest business import are intrusted to them with no security except their honor. It speaks well for the profession that so few have fallen short of expectations and have failed to respond to the last farthing for all matters intrusted to them. A consideration of the nature of the profession and the relationship between attorney and client forbids irresponsible men being turned loose upon society, or intrusted with this high office and the special learning which it implies. Society at large would pay an unspeakable penalty if such were the case. The courts have ever maintained the highest standards for the legal profession, and we cannot lower them. The foregoing general observations are in substance submitted to the court by the state board of law examiners by their report in this case. We heartily and cordially concur in them as all members of this court have done heretofore.""

(2) An examination in the Canons of Ethics, particularly as applied to concrete illustrative cases, is also, in our opinion, a needed prerequisite to admission to the Bar. The Appellate Division, in the first department, has already by its approval of Canon 27, in the Schwartz case (175 App. Div., 335), and in the Gray case (November, 1918) indicated that the consensus of ethical opinion of the Bar will be recognized by the Courts in defining from time to time the standards of professional conduct to which lawyers must conform, under penalty of censure, suspension or disbarment.

But the Committee is divided on the propriety of making a course in legal ethics compulsory in the law schools, that is, in the sense that it should be a definite separate course.

It is held by some instructors that such a separation of indoctrination "tends to emphasize the mistaken notion, that