Lawyers Protect Freedom, Stryker Tells Law School

"When there are no longer lawyers amongst us willing to throw themselves between their clients and the massed weight to society, then justice, and life as we know it, will end," Paul Stryker told a capacity audience in Langdell Hall yesterday afternoon.

Sponsored by the Student Bar Association of the Law School, the noted trial lawyer sketched the pre-requisites for successful trial practice through stories from his own experience and from the experience of other well known advocates.

"Human problems are the fabric of the legal suit," Stryker stated. He explained that understanding of these problems, and the wit to structure them are learned from the lives of great men, from one's personal experience, and from the pages of history.

Stryker explained to the predominantly law student audience the great variation between the law as it appears in the opinions of the judges and as it is reared from argument and testimony in the trial. "The written opinion is merely the judges' rationalization of his feelings about the facts. The reason for his decision may be come very human incident of the trial.