work is approved by the owner, the architect's claim to the lien will fall and the remedy will not be available to him.

Approval by the owner does not mean, necessarily, a specific written or verbal approval. The approval may be implied. If the owner allows the work to be done, knowing that it is being done and, by his actions, indicates his acceptance of the situation and approval of it, he may be held to have impliedly authorized it. It is far safer, of course, to secure the written approval of the owner and, unless this is done, the right of the lien will rest upon an insecure foundation. In the case of architectural work, the consent of the owner may usually be established, without much difficulty, where the work is done for him direct. His approval of the plans, for instance, or the correspondence passing between him and the architect with reference to them, and his entering into the agreement with the contractor for the conduct of the work, are all evidential of his knowledge that it is being performed and of his consent that it be done. Where work is done for one who is not the owner of the property in connection with which it is performed, a more dangerous situation is presented. If work is done for a tenant and the consent of the owner of the property, expressed or implied, is not secured, the architect will not be able to enforce a lien against the property. The fact that he may, in such a case, have a perfectly definite and comprehensive contract with the tenant, who is his client, directing him to do the work and specifying the compensation to be paid to him, will avail him not at all, in so far as the enforcement of a lien is concerned. It will enable him to hold the client liable, but it will not place him in a position where he can satisfy his claim from the property itself.

Where work of any magnitude is undertaken,

therefore, for one who is not the owner of the property involved, and where the financial responsibility of the client is not satisfactorily established, it will be an exceedingly wise precaution for the architect to secure, if possible, the consent of the owner of the property to the work proposed. This consent, as we have seen, should, wherever possible, be in writing or evidenced by some written memorandum. It is not at all necessary, however, that it be placed in any special form, or be formal or technical in its language. A word to the owner, stating that the architect has been asked to perform the work and, inasmuch as the client is not the owner, that it is desired that the owner consent to this being done, and a reply from the owner stating that he does consent, is all that is required. It is not necessary to raise the question of lien protection in securing this consent. It is, in many cases, quite natural, if not necessary, to ask the owner to give his consent to the plans. An endorsement on the plans of his approval, without any other letter or word from him, may be sufficient to indicate clearly his consent to the work and satisfy the technical requirements of the lien statute.

Another phase of this same question is involved where the client is not a tenant, but where the property stands in the name of someone else, as, for example, in the name of his wife. This latter is a very common situation and, where the title is in the wife, the architect will not be able to enforce his lien, if his contract is with the husband, unless he can establish the consent of the wife to the performance of the work. The mere failure of the wife to protest against the performance of the work and the fact that, seeing certain work done, she remains silent, cannot safely be relied upon to establish her legal consent. Where the title is in her name, if the architect wishes to protect his legal rights, he should either

make her a party to the contract covering his services or secure from her some letter or memorandum, showing that she consents to the performance by him of the services which he has been asked to perform. I have recently had a case of this character, where the architect's contract was with the husband, and the title to the land proved, upon investigation, to be in the wife. The husband refused to make payment of the architect's account and had no money from which the architect could satisfy his claim. The only possible hope lay in the filing and sustaining of a lien and, in this connection, we were met with the difficulty of proving the consent of the wife. The case was finally adjusted but, if it had gone to trial and our proof with respect to the consent of the wife had been considered insufficient, the architect's right to a lien would not have been sustained and the final result would have been a total loss to him, so far as this particular job was concerned.

There is in all probability, however, no branch of the law more technical than that which has to do with the construction and practical application of lien statutes. The Lien Law is a purely statutory creation. Unlike a large proportion of our law, as it stands today, it is not the result of a slow development based on the common law and the decisions of the courts over a period of many hundreds of years. On the contrary, it is a remedy created arbitrarily, by the statutes of the various jurisdictions in which it is applied, to supply the protection which, under modern conditions, it has been felt should be accorded to him who has, by his labor and services, contributed to the improvement of real property. As is well known, the doctrine has been further extended to cover mechanics in their work on articles of personal property, such as automobiles. The phase of the Lien Law with which the architect is naturally con

cerned, however, is the basic and important body of the law dealing with real estate improvements.

Due to the strictly statutory character of the law the statutes are necessarily technical and unless their provisions are strictly followed and observed the lienor may, as a result, lose the protection of the statute entirely. There are various requirements, for instance, which must be met in filing a lien under the laws of the different states. These laws vary in their scope and wording and the lienor, to be on the safe side, should in every case take proper advice before filing his lien. The preparation and filing of the lien is not a matter of difficulty to a lawyer familiar with lien law and procedure but it is extremely dangerous for any lienor to attempt to act as his own attorney and to prepare and file his own notice of lien. The expense incident to having the lien properly prepared and filed is small, and is negligible, when compared to the risk of loss incident to an attempt by the lienor to proceed alone and without proper advice.

CHAPTER XII.

THE REGISTRATION OF ARCHITECTS

The development and merits of registration legislation.—The practice of architecture by corporations.-Effect of registration laws on corporations.-The question of doing business.

The enactment of statutes covering the registration of architects is a comparatively recent development. It is a development which should be, and has been, welcomed by the architectural profession. Since the first registration law was passed, the various states have rapidly fallen in line with the registration idea and passed statutes which, while they differ in many ways, are nevertheless based on the same general idea. Just as physicians are licensed to practice, and lawyers are admitted to the Bar, so now the better practice is to have an architect admitted before he is allowed to undertake the practice of his profession. Public opinion, as well as the opinion of thoughtful architects, has strongly endorsed the registration plan. The protection which it gives to the public is obvious, and the advantages which accrue from it to thoroughly highclass architects, in preventing unprofessional competition and a general cheapening of the professional standards, are equally obvious. It is probable that as time passes the registration statutes will attain a greater degree of uniformity and that a workable reciprocity, between the various states, will be so developed as to make the registration laws flexible and not unduly burdensome.

As matters stand today, the architect, practicing