What Makes a Good Lawyer? Was Magnaud indeed such a good lawyer?

Abstract

The points presented in this document can be summarized as follows:

1. The jurist mentality is characterized by a peculiar argumentation technique that is in conflict with common sense. This is due to the fact that a jurist has to work with defined texts and concepts (or precedents) and solve various practical problems with a reference to them (rather than personal feelings, morality or efficiency).

2. Another typical quality is a practical procedural approach (e.g. auditur et altera pars). This goes back several generations of experience.

3. The most striking feature of a good jurist is dual-connectedness thinking. This requires a jurist to meet an internal (typically jurist's) standard of argumentation and an external evaluation standard. This external criterion means that a good lawyer must always take into account the interests/values at stake in the legal debate.

4. In general, the evaluation criterion does not normally appear explicitly in the argumentation, only between the lines and indirectly. Teleological argumentation may be, in special circumstances, the exception.

5. Magnaud, the famous French judge of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, met the above criteria, so he was a really good jurist (or "good judge" as reflected in his epithet). 6. Depending on the concept of legal scholarship used, the above statements apply to works of legal scholarship only to a limited extent or do not apply at all.