The nature of legal education in the last decades of the nineteenth century changed significantly. In 1878 there were over three thousand students in American law schools; only 703 of them had college degrees. The law was viewed by many as a practical trade, not a learned profession. Justice Samuel Miller stated in 1879 that with "the accelerated pace at which modern human beings are propelled, under the influence of railroads, telegraphs, and the press, it is . . . absurd to spend . . . four collegiate years in the study of dead languages and theoretical mathematics." Most law schools did not require a college degree, and most had less stringent requirements than colleges. In 1899 Cornell required that students in its law school meet the same admission standards as students in its undergraduate college, requesting a high-school diploma for admission. Because of this reform, the entering class for that year...