desirable by what he saw at the meetings of the American Bar Association. He felt that Massachusetts, like the other states in the Union, should have a State Bar Association. He began talking to me at Detroit and at other meetings of the American Bar Association. Finally he began talking to Mr. Friedman and he persuaded him and persuaded me that it was desirable that Massachusetts should have a State Bar Association. If he had not year by year advocated the formation of the State Bar Association I doubt if it ever would have been formed, or at any rate it would have delayed coming for quite a number of years. Since the Association was formed Mr. Niles has been interested, active, and helpful in the work of the Association. This is no time to pay a tribute to Mr. Niles' worth, he was recognized in his own county of Essex, was President of the Essex County Bar Association, but I do think that we should spread upon our records not any resolution, but let it appear that we did have in mind that he was a valued member of the Association.

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The PRESIDENT: If there is no objection these remarks will be spread upon the records of the Association as an expression of the Association's feelings.

DISCUSSION.

Employment of Legislative Secretary.

The SECRETARY: The first question for discussion is this:

(1.) Whether the Executive Committee be authorized to expend the funds of the Association in the employment of a legislative secretary to keep members informed of proposed legislation by means of bulletins or otherwise.

Mr. DAVID A. ELLIS: Mr. President, some of the work of the Legislative Committee has been very arduous indeed. To follow up all the bills as they are introduced at the State House, to collate those, to determine which ones should be dealt with at all, which should be favored, which should be opposed, and then to start the machinery of the Legislative

Committee and of the Executive Committee going on the subject, has called for a very large degree of labor, which has been faithfully and efficiently performed by Mr. Grinnell, the secretary of our Committee. I do not think the members begin to appreciate how great a sacrifice of time and energy it has required upon his part. I do not think the Association has the right to ask that an individual should continue such large personal sacrifices. It seems proper that the Legislative Committee should be assisted by some member of the bar who is paid for his work and who can attend to a great deal of the routine and detail work of the committee. No such paid man, I am sure, could be expected or hoped to write such a report as Mr. Grinnell has written for the Legislative Committee, but the routine work and the detail work and the following of the bills is a matter that he might be expected to do. If that was done the Legislative Committee would be relieved of a very serious burden. In addition to that it seems to me entirely feasible for the Committee to issue bulletins from time to time to the members of the Massachusetts Bar Association, keeping them advised of what is taking place at the State House. Members of the Bar Association, particularly those who reside at some distance from Boston, feel that such services would be very useful indeed to them. I think that the Association could afford to undertake that work from the financial point of view. I think Mr. Ware, with whom I discussed the matter last night, would agree in that regard. I think, too, that an active keeping in touch with members of the Association throughout the State through the bulletins of the Legislative Committee would be a very strong argument for adding to the membership of the Association and would so swell our receipts, perhaps to as great an extent, at any rate to a large part of the expense, which this expense would impose upon the Association.

Mr. THAYER: Mr. President, the statement was made that the Association could afford to do it. I should amend that by saying that the Association could not afford not to do it. No one who has seen the work that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Grinnell have been doing could even faintly realize the

quantity and quality of that work, and if they believe they need any such assistance as this I do not think there is much to discuss about it.

Mr. HAMMOND: I had hoped that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Grinnell would have prepared a motion by which that could be put concretely upon our records. I certainly endorsed that suggestion.

Mr. E. A. WHITMAN: Mr. President, may I make a suggestion from a little different point of view. It seems to me that not only is this due to the gentlemen who have done so much work, but it is due to this Association. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the last Legislature told my partner that the Judiciary Committee was a little tired of hearing about the bar associations, and that the recommendation of the bar associations did not carry much weight with that committee. And that, I take it, was due to the fact that frequently, from pertinent questions being put by the committee when measures were presented, it had to appear that the measure which was advocated in the name of the Bar Association had been considered by a few gentlemen, almost all of them residents of Boston, and only in name and so far as the report was concerned was it the recommendation of the Bar Association. Anything, therefore, which can be done to enlist a larger interest throughout the Association and to convince the Legislature that what is presented to them is not the result of the consideration of two or three gentlemen, but has had at least the consideration of a larger number, is bound to have weight.

Mr. FITZ HENRY SMITH : I should like to add a word along the lines of the gentleman who has just sat down, a personal and a practical view of this case. It was my lot -I was going to say misfortune to sit through the last Legislature, my first offence. As most of you know who have anything to do with the General Court of Massachusetts, it is about all that a man can do to follow the bills before his own committee, to get to the bottom. Matters affecting legal questions go to more than one committee. The Judiciary Committee by no means handles all the bills which cover matters in which a lawyer is supposed to

be interested. There is the Committee on Legal Affairs; bills relating to corporations go to the Committee on Mercantile Affairs. The Committee on Mercantile Affairs did not this year have a single lawyer on it, and they reported one very important bill respecting the rights of minority stockholders to representation on boards of directors, an unconstitutional measure, which we were able to defeat. The secretary of this Association would be able to keep in touch with all measures, no matter what committee they went before, and sending notices to all members of the Association would not only keep the members of the bar in touch with the situation, but would also keep the lawyers in the Legislature who were not members of the Committee in touch with the situation. I think the proposition will be of benefit not only to the members of the Bar who are outside the Legislature, but to poor fellows like myself who are in the Legislature.

The PRESIDENT: The question is, changing the question to a motion it is moved that the Executive Committee be authorized to expend the funds of the Association in the employment of a legislative secretary to keep members informed of proposed legislation by means of bulletins or otherwise.

The question being put on the motion as stated by the chair, the motion was unanimously adopted.

DISCUSSION.

(2.) Whether bills of exceptions constitute in all cases the best method of raising questions of law for the consideration of the Supreme Judicial Court.

The SECRETARY: The second subject for discussion is this: Whether bills of exceptions constitute in all cases the best method of raising questions of law for the consideration of the Supreme Judicial Court.

The PRESIDENT : The chair awaits any suggestion.

Mr. ELLIS: Mr. President, perhaps it would be well for me to explain what the Committee had in mind in suggesting this issue. We have, in the first place, no definite program which we ask the Association to adopt on this particular matter. We thought it an important and interesting matter which would be illuminated by discussion, and from such discussion we hoped that the Legislative Committee and the members of the Association in general would profit.

A serious situation exists in the matter of bills of exceptions. It is common experience, I suppose, after a case has been tried and exceptions have been taken, that often a number of months, sometimes a year, sometimes even longer than that, elapses before a bill of exceptions has been prepared and allowed by the Court. This delay is a very serious matter to the clients who are interested in the cause. It is also a very serious reproach to the administration of justice. It is not only time, however, which is lost in the matter — it only too frequently happens that there are lengthy and widespread wrangles over the subject of what should go into the bill, and that a great deal of valuable time and energy on the part of counsel is consumed. This seems to be a real evil in the administration of our system which calls for some sort of remedy. In the report of the Legislative Committee there is a footnote prepared by Mr. Thorndike which calls attention to the English practice in this matter. That practice, in a nutshell, is to have the whole case go up at once to the appellate court upon either the judge's notes or the stenographer's notes, as the case may be, and upon the actual exhibits in the case, so that the appellate court has before it all the material upon which the case was tried and has this material presented to it in the very shortest possible time.

Now, such a system presents very marked advantages over the one which is in vogue in this State. On the other hand, we all realize, I think, that the methods of trial in England are considerably different from those which obtain here; that the trials as a whole are very much shorter and that the attitude of the Bar towards exceptions is very