Book Description

Excerpt from Hints on Advocacy: Intended for Practitioners in Civil and Criminal Courts, With Suggestions as to Opening a Case Examination, Re-Examination, Reply, Conduct of a Prosecution and of a Defense, Etc;, And Illustrative Cases There is no school of advocacy; there are no lectures on advocacy; and so far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no book on the subject. The young lawyer has to find his way as best he can, very often to the sacrifice of important interests and many unfortunate clients. As he has never learned anything of the art of advocacy, he is no more fitted for the task of advocating their rights than the clients themselves, except in so far as his knowledge of law will assist him in the purely legal aspects of the question. It seems to me lamentable that no instruction should ever be given in an art which requires an almost infinite amount of knowledge. Tact can not be taught, but it will follow from experience, and a good deal of experience may be condensed into the form of rules. "I never felt so much in want of a leader as I did when I had to cross-examine that doctor," said a talented junior of considerable standing, the other day. Why should this have been? What he had to cross-examine about was simple enough, although the question involved was the sanity or insanity of an individual at a particular time. But he had no rule to guide him, and was simply adrift. It is with the hope that some of the observations I have made in the course of my experience may be of some little service to beginners in the profession, and whose want of knowledge of this great practical branch of it is no fault of theirs, that I have ventured to offer them the following "Hints." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.