The necessary qualifications for engaging in the practice of law are:
Twenty years of age; the title of “licentiate” in the faculty of laws
and political sciences in the University of Chile; to have never been
condemned in the courts, nor actually to have a case pending for a
crime which demands corporal punishment. A five years’ course of study
in one of the Liceos (colleges) is required. After an examination
in one of the subjects included in the course, according to subject
drawn by lottery, the student receives the degree of Bachelor in the
University. After five years’ study in a University as Bachelor of Laws
and Political Science, another year’s study is required before the
degree of lawyer can be obtained. Only lawyers are permitted to plead
in the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal, unless the principal himself
wishes to plead his own case.
Unfortunately there is a class of individuals other than lawyers
who can appear for defendants in all the courts. They are known as
“tinterillos,” and are the plague of the courts and a curse to the
country. As a class they are without equal or comparison in any
country. They are, as a rule, ignorant of the law, unscrupulous and
dishonest. Their special prey is the poorer classes who have not the
means to employ lawyers. Once a victim in the hands of a tinterillo,
the unfortunate individual finds himself enmeshed in a maze of
unscrupulous proceedings that are neither regular nor legal, and are
calculated to draw him deeper into the intricacies of Chilean law.
Their knowledge of practice is gained from observation, and not from
the study of law or proceedings. They usually get cases mixed in an
inextricable tangle, lengthen the proceedings, carrying them through
wrongly, employ unlawful means in the way of false witnesses, etc.
They are permitted to engage in their despicable practices in the
courts under the democratic theory that in a Republic, liberty should
be denied to none, though generally the evil effects of such liberty
are painfully apparent. Because of this theory the evil continues, and
nothing is done to eliminate the objectionable practice from the courts.