Craig & Black, 1955 to 1960
On May 18, 1954, I was granted the “Title and Degree of Bachelor of Laws as with all the rights, privileges, and honours so with all the duties thereto appertaining.” Those marvellous words have been removed from present-day degrees. No longer “granted,” they are “conferred” without mention of privileges and duties. This change has stripped from the law degree the essence of being a lawyer.
Having stumbled without distinction through the gauntlet of examinations, I found myself facing one more year of education before I was permitted to be a lawyer. I had to find a practising member of the Law Society of British Columbia who would accept me as his articled clerk. After one year of instruction I would present myself to a committee of two or three old benchers to be examined perfunctorily, and, so long as I was not a communist, I would be admitted as a solicitor and called to the bar as a barrister.
It was all very simple but for one daunting aspect—who on earth would take on a dead tired plywood worker as a student, especially one who had absorbed By the time I was halfway through law school many of my classmates were positioned to secure articles—through family connections or by virtue of achieving first-class standing in examinations and even under the Old Pals Act. The only lawyers I had seen in the flesh were guest lecturers from downtown, and they were always surrounded after class by a scrum of compulsively bright students.
