This is true of the profession of law.  So, at the beginning of your beginnings, do not begin at all unless you see a certainty of misery if you do not.  Unless you are convinced that you would rather work, toil, nay, slave for years to secure recognition in the law, than to be honored and enriched in some other occupation, do not enter this profession of supreme ardor.

And above all things, do not enter it if you expect to practise law principally for the purpose of making money.  It is not a money-making profession.  The same effort, acumen, and enthusiasm expended in almost any other occupation will bring you financial returns tremendously out of proportion to your most successful compensation in the law, measured by mere money.  The money-making conception of our profession is not only erroneous, but ruinous; for you must remember, to begin with, that you are practising the science of justice.

If possible, get a thorough college education before you touch a law book.  If you can get a college education, do not “read law” while you are at college.  If you go to college, do not take what is known as the “scientific” course, or “physical” course.  Take the classical course.  Next to geometry and logarithms and the Bible, the best discipline preparatory to making you a lawyer is the translation of Latin.  Latin is the most logical language the world has ever seen, or is likely ever to see.

After you get your college course, then go to a thoroughly first-class law school.  After this, spend two or three years in active work in the office of some successful lawyer who has lots of practise, and who will load off on your shoulders as much work as possible.

If you cannot go to a law school, your training in the law office will do you nearly as well.  You can get along without your law school, but you can never get along without your training in the law office.  The way to learn to swim is to swim.

But if you cannot get a college education, do not get discouraged.  It is possible that you are an Abraham Lincoln, or a John Marshall, or some person like that; and if you are you will succeed anyhow.  Even if you are not so highly gifted you can win in the law without a college education if you are naturally a lawyer and will work hard enough.  If you have to choose between a law school and a college education, take the latter.  But the training afforded by a clerkship in an active lawyer’s office is more helpful than either.

If you can be so fortunate as to get the firm or attorney with whom you are studying to let you draft pleadings, take depositions, examine witnesses, make arguments to court and jury, get out transcripts for appeal, write briefs, petitions, motions, and all the rest of that careful and painstaking work which makes the daily life of the lawyer, you will equip yourself for actual practise better than in any other way I know of.

The firm will gladly let you do this work if you show yourself competent.  But this does not mean that you are merely to sit around the office and say “bright things.”  There is nothing in “bright things”—­there is everything in good judgment and downright hard work.