Part 14 (1/2)
Do not work late at night. It is a fict.i.tious clearness of mind that comes to the midnight toiler. This also grows into a habit. Conform to Nature. Go to bed early. Get up early, and do your fine and original work in the morning. It will be hard for you to form the habit, but after you have done it you will be amazed at the comparatively immense nervous power you possess in the morning hours.
In trying a case before a jury, never be trivial. Do not bandy gibes, no matter how witty you may know yourself to be in repartee. The jury, and even the court, may laugh, but they are not impressed, and you have not helped your case; _and you are there to win your case_. As in your argument, so in your examination of witnesses, _keep to the point_.
In arguing a case, no matter what its nature, before a court or jury, never rage or rave. Get to the point. Speak with great earnestness, but not with violence or volume of sound. Remember that even the most terrible emotions of the human heart in their most intense expression are comparatively quiet. Be earnest. Be sincere. Be the master of your case, and the result must be satisfactory.
It sometimes becomes necessary for an attorney to a.s.sert his rights and privileges to the judge himself. Do not shrink from it. It is your duty to your client, your profession, and the cause of justice. Never cringe to a court. Never cringe to any one. He will despise you for it, and properly so. Remember the dignity of your profession. Erskine, in his first case, rebuked a prejudiced and perhaps an unjust judge with such vigor that England rang with it.
Cultivate lucidity of style. You will do that at some risk at first.
When a young lawyer is extremely clear, he is apt to be regarded as not deep. Abstruseness in expression is very frequently regarded as an indication of profundity. Nevertheless, persist in a clear and simple style. Make the statement of your case and the argument in support of your propositions so lucid and plain that the judge or jury will say: ”Why, of course, that is so. What is the use of the young man stating that?”
The study of Abraham Lincoln's speeches will be very helpful. Two or three of Roscoe Conkling's arguments after he left the Senate are models of perspicuity. Mr. Potter's argument in the legal tender cases is a model--it is Euclid stated in terms of the law. Webster's arguments you will study, of course. Blackstone is one of the clearest writers who ever ill.u.s.trated the great science to which you and I are devoted. Perhaps as great a logician as ever lived was the Apostle Paul; read him as a master of logical utterance.
Never be ponderous; never be florid. At the same time, never be dry.
Be clear; be pointed; be luminous. I remember having heard both sides of a case argued before an eminent Federal Judge. One of the lawyers made a long, turgid, ”profound”--and musty--argument; proceeding like a draft-horse from mile-post to mile-post, until the alert mind of the judge was almost frantic with impatience.
The lawyer on the other side is one of the most eminent members of our profession. He is as lithe as a panther, physically and mentally, sharp as a serpent's tooth, as lucid as the atmosphere on a cloudless day, and yet as suggestive as a hickory-wood fire in the old home fireplace on a wintry night. He paced the floor in impatience while Mr. Turgidity blew the clouds of dust from precedent after precedent.
When it came his time to reply, he did so with a clearness and wealth of expression, an appropriateness of ill.u.s.tration, and a simplicity of reasoning that made one feel that the other man had committed an impertinence in presenting his side at all. Of course he won his case.
Respect yourself. A man may lose his money, his reputation--may even lose everything; and yet he has not lost everything if he retains his self-respect. Be a gentleman at the outset of your career and forever.
Do not move among men like a beggar for favors. Do not wear poor clothes. Apparel yourself like a gentleman.
No client worth having respects you for advertising your poverty. Do not fear that your community will not know that you are poor. They know it, and sympathize with you. But every one of our race likes to see a man ”game.” Therefore, dress well. Bear yourself like a man who has prosperous potentialities if not prosperous a.s.sets.
Keep your office in as perfect condition as yourself. Remember that it is your workshop. Put all your extra money into books. There is no adornment of an office equal to a library, just as there is no adornment of a mechanic's shop equal to his tools. You know what you think of a doctor when you find his office equipped with the latest appliances.
Do not permit your office to be a loafing place, even for your fellow lawyers. You cannot afford to cultivate professional courtesy at the expense of the discipline of your office. It is nothing to your client that your friends find your society so charming that they seek the felicity of your conversation even in your office. Or, rather, it _is_ something to your client--he wants his case won and he thinks _that_ will take all your time. And so it will.
Be very careful of the places you frequent. Remember that Pericles was never seen except upon the street leading to the Senate House. Don't imitate anybody--be yourself. Still, if you must have the stimulus of imitation, pick out a man like Pericles for your model.
Depend upon yourself; do not call into council another attorney. This is a point on which most lawyers will disagree with me. Nevertheless, if you are not competent to handle your case, you have done wrong to open an independent office. If you call in another attorney, every probability is that you will suggest all the solutions yourself and in reality win the case; but your old and distinguished a.s.sociate will get all the credit. But you need all the credit for work which you really do.
See well to your evidence before you go into the trial of a cause. Be very cautious on cross-examination. It is the most powerful but most delicate and dangerous instrument known to the surgery of the law. Do not bl.u.s.ter, ”bull-doze,” or browbeat a witness; there is nothing in it. You only make the jury sympathize with the person abused. Remember that an American loves nothing so much as fair play. When on a jury, he is apt to regard you and the witness as adversaries, you the stronger and with immense advantage.
Ask few questions on cross-examination. Employ the Socratic method always. Ask only those questions the logical conclusion of which is irresistible, and _stop there_. Don't press the _conclusion_ on the witness. It is your province to show that in your argument.
A timid witness, whom you know to be telling the truth, may often be confused by cross-examination and made to make a false statement; but this you have no right, as an honorable attorney, to make him do. A just judge ought to stop you if you try it. To confuse a witness whom you know to be telling the truth is not skill; it is a trick, and a very miserable trick, whose performance requires neither real ability nor learning.
Think what a tremendous intellectual effort the properly conducted lawsuit is. You must know your case; you must know your evidence; you must know each witness as a person and each item of his testimony; you must know the law applicable to your general proposition, and the general law upon its various ramifications; you must study the witnesses of the other side; and, almost more important than any of these, you must study that wonderful combination of intellect, prejudice, and pa.s.sion called the jury.
When the time comes for you to address that jury you must thoroughly understand each man. This is not that you may influence him, or ”play upon” him, or resort to any of the devices of the baser sort. It is that you may know how best to get the truth of your case to him. How to get your theory, your cause, before each juror should be your only concern.
Never try to be ”eloquent.” Never be funny. Wit may cause laughter, it never produces conviction. A joke may divert, it never persuades. It is unnecessary even to arouse a jury's sympathies. _Forget everything except making the juror understand your case._ The result will be that he will understand your case, and if he understands it, and it is a case you ought to win, his understanding of it means that you will win it.
Take at least one excellent legal periodical. There are four or five ”law” magazines published in America, some of them very good indeed.
Do not pay any attention to the digests of cases with which some of these periodicals burden their pages, except to see if there is a recent decision on some case you are trying. You cannot remember them, and the effort to do so will only confuse. But you will usually find in each number one serious and profitable article, and possibly more, on matters of real interest to the profession. Read such articles very carefully.