Sir Edward Abbott Parry

“ Most re-examination intending to rehabilitate the character of a witness is apt to make matters worse.
These stories of actual happenings, trivial in themselves, teach us the necessity of judgment in advocacy. And I pray the young advocate not to rejoice too merrily over the errors of judgment of his seniors or lament too grievously about his own. Bear in mind that by acknowledged error we may learn wisdom, and that the only illuminant for the lamp of judgment is the oil of experience. ”

“ If an advocate knows the law to be x, it is not honest to lead the court to believe that it is y. Whether the advocate does this by directly mis-stating the law, or by deliberately omitting to state it fully within the means of his knowledge, it is equally without excuse, and dims the lamp of honesty.
For the advocate must remember that he is not only the servant of the client, but the friend of the court, and honesty is as essential to true friendship as it is to sound advocacy. ”

“ Advocacy is a form of combat where courage in danger is half the battle. Courage is as good a weapon in the forum as in the camp. The advocate, like Cæsar, must stand upon his mound facing the enemy, worthy to be feared, and fearing no man.
Unless a man has the spirit to encounter difficulties with firmness and pluck, he had best leave advocacy alone. Richard Bethell, Lord Westbury, in early life took for his motto: “De l’audace et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace.” In advising on a case he was always clear and direct, saying that he was “paid for his opinion, not for his doubts.” ”

“ It has always been a reproach to our advocacy that it injured its clients by calculated circumlocution, an exuberance of verbosity, and a prolixity of style and method ruinous to the widows and the fatherless and the strangers that strayed within the gates of the temple.
Good advocacy displays the highest form of wit in an instinct for brevity. The healthy appetite of judge and advocate alike is shown in a keenness to “get through the rind of the orange and reach the pulp as soon as possible.” ”

“ The days of wandering in cloisters and gardens, putting cases to one’s fellow-students, and listening to the wisdom of elders by the margin of the fountain are, alas! not for us. But even to-day a wise youngster should recognise that sitting in court to listen to the conduct of cases, attendance at circuit mess and dining in Hall, where the law-talk of seniors may still on occasion be of value—these things are all forms of industry, for the advocate can only learn the true creed of his faith from oral tradition. ”

“ It would appear from the history of advocacy that the flame of the lamp of eloquence may vary from time to time in heat and colour. One cannot say that the style of one advocate is correct and another incorrect, since the style is the attribute of the man and the generation he is trying to persuade. Yet, however different the style may be, the essential power of persuasion must be present. He must, as Hamlet says, be able to play upon his jury, knowing the stops, and sounding them from the lowest note to the top of the compass. ”

“ For without a free and honourable race of advocates the world will hear little of the message of justice. Advocacy is the outward and visible appeal for the spiritual gift of justice. The advocate is the priest in the temple of justice, trained in the mysteries of the creed, active in its exercises. ”

“ No man ever attains a position at the Bar in which he can afford to despise the opinion of his fellow-men. The eulogies of public journals, even the praise and patronage of attorneys, are of no worth compared with the respect of the Bar. As a French advocate wrote: “A solid reputation proceeds only from the Court.”
Charles Russell, who stood on a somewhat lonely eminence at the head of his profession, and dealt with the affairs of his fellows in a very rough-handed and independent manner, was at heart very jealous of the good opinion of the Bar. ”

“ Eloquence of manner is real eloquence, and is a gift not to be despised. There is a physical as well as a psychological side to advocacy, documentary evidence of which may be found in the old prints and portraits of those who have been called to high office from among us. They are, on the whole, a stout, well-favoured race.
Charm of voice and manner has always received due reward. Thomas Denman had a fine, musical voice, an easy manner, and the sincerity and fervour of his address made him a popular advocate. ”

“ There is no golden rule of method, but there is this golden principle to remember that the message of eloquence is addressed to the heart rather than the brain. This is well put by Lord Chesterfield, who was more human than many will allow, when he wrote to his son: “Gain the heart, or you gain nothing; the eyes and the ears are the only road to the heart. Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained. ”

“ A learned County Court judge, in dealing with the unfortunate bankruptcy of a brother-barrister, expressed the opinion that for a man to come to the Bar without private means, or, at least, expectations from a maiden aunt, was “a rash and hazardous speculation.” His dictum was unsound in law and history. Some of the greatest advocates began life as poor men. And though men of wealth have succeeded in advocacy, yet poverty is a true friend to industry. ”

“ An advocate lacking in fellowship, careless of the sacred traditions of brotherhood which have kept the lamp of fellowship burning brightly for the English Bar through many centuries, a man who joins the Bar merely as a trade or business, and does not understand that it is also a professional community with public ideals, misses the heart of the thing, and he and his clients will suffer accordingly. ”

“ The most eloquent advocacy that is reported in print is to be found not in law reports, but in fiction—in the speeches of Portia and Serjeant Buzfuz, for instance, where for all time the world continues hanging on the lips of the advocate in excited sympathy with the client.
There are some who think that rhetoric at the Bar has fallen in esteem. The modern world has certainly lost its taste for sweet and honeyed sentences, and sets a truer value on fine phrases and the fopperies of the tongue ”

“ There never was a successful advocate who did not owe some of his prowess to industry. From the biographies of our ancestors we may learn that the eminent successful ones of each generation practiced at least enough industry in their day to preach its virtues to aspiring juniors.
Work soon becomes a habit. It may not be altogether a good habit, but it is better to wear out than to rust out. Nothing, we are told, is impossible to industry. Certainly without industry the armoury of the advocate will lack weapons on the day of battle. ”

“ Let no one think that he can attain to sound judgment without hard work. The judgment of the advocate must be based on the maxim, “He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable cannot acquit himself of judging amiss.”
A client is entitled to the independent judgment of the advocate. Whether his judgment is right or wrong, it is the duty of the advocate to place it at the disposal of his client. In the business of advocacy judgment is the goods that the advocate is bound to deliver. ”

“ Kenyon, when asked by a fashionable lady how her son might best prepare for success at the Bar, said: “Let him spend all his money, marry a rich wife, spend all hers, and when he has got not a shilling in the world, let him attack the law.” For a lawyer, as an old pleader said, must be prepared in his early days “to eat sawdust without butter,” or, as [46] Lord Eldon put it, “to live like a hermit and work like a horse.”
If a man is endowed with health and industry, the profession of an advocate is not “a rash and hazardous speculation.” ”

“ Inasmuch as their methods were often new and startling to their own generation, the young student of acting or advocacy is eager to believe that there are no methods and no technique to learn, and no school in which to graduate. Youth is at all times prone to act on the principle that there are no principles, that there is no one from whom it can learn, and nothing [12] to teach. Any one, it seems, can don a wig and gown, and thereby become an advocate. Yet there are principles of advocacy ”

“ Nevertheless, although an advocate is bound by obligations of honour and probity not to overstate the truth of his client’s case, and is forbidden to have recourse to any artifice or subterfuge which may beguile the judge, he is not the judge of the case, and within these limits must use all the knowledge and gifts he possesses to advance his client’s claims to justice.
Many good men have been troubled with the thought that advocacy implied a certain want of honesty. ”

“ It is very true that learning begets courage, and wise self-confidence can only be founded on knowledge. The long years of apprenticeship, the studious attention to “preparatives,” are, to the advocate, like the manly exercises of the young squire that enabled the knight of old to earn his spurs on the field of battle. ”

“ Brougham’s tribute to Erskine’s eloquence is perhaps the best pen-picture of an English advocate we possess, and it is noticeable how he emphasises this power of persuasion and endeavours to solve the psychology of it. He places in the foreground the physical appearance of the man, a great factor in each style of advocacy. ”

“ If the advocate refuses to defend, from what he may think of the charge or of the defence, he assumes the character of the judge; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment; and, in proportion [32] to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy influence of perhaps a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused, in whose favour the benevolent principle of English law makes all presumptions, and which commands the very judge to be his counsel. ”

“ In nothing does the advocate more openly exhibit want of judgment than in prolixity. Modern courts of justice are blamed by the public, not wholly without cause, for the length and consequent expense of trials. To poor people this may mean a denial of justice. No one desires that the judge should constantly interfere with counsel in the discharge of their duties, but it seems to be his duty on occasion to blow his whistle and point out to the combatants that they are offside. ”

“ True, these figures of forgotten advocates are dim and obscure—only to be painfully seen through the dusty gauzes of forgotten years, pictured for us in drowsy voluminous memoirs, or baldly reported in mouldering law reports; but if we search these records diligently we gradually discern a race of worthy men—see them haunting the old libraries, pacing the ancient halls with their clients, proud of the traditions of their great profession—advocates—advocates all. ”

“ It is part of the advocate’s rôle to make the jury believe in his infallibility, and every question he asks that gives the witness an opportunity to score off him and belittle him in their eyes is an error of judgment. Serjeant Buzfuz, who conducted his case with fine judgment, was guilty of a grave error in his examination of Sam Weller. Brow-beating is always a dangerous policy ”

“ Independence without moderation becomes licentiousness, but true independence is an essential attribute of advocacy, and the English Bar has never wanted men endowed with this form of true courage. The sacrifice of the highest professional honours to the maintenance of principle has been a commonplace in the history of English advocates, and the names of the living could be added if need be to those who have passed away, leaving us this clean heritage as example. ”

“ The student of advocacy can draw inspiration and hope from the stored-up experience of his elders. He can trace in the plans and life-charts of the ancients the paths along which they strode, journeying towards Eldorado. ”

“ And if advocacy could be honestly described as a trade, then the phrase trade union might be accepted without demurrer. For the basic quality of a trade union, that which has made these institutions thrive against opposition, is the spirit of fellowship and unselfishness which is the ideal of its members. ”

“ There have been many advocates whose courage was founded on humour rather than knowledge, and who have successfully [28] asserted their independence in the face of an impatient or overbearing Bench through the medium of wit, where mere wisdom might have failed in effect.
Of such was Tom Jones, who startled Mr. Justice Byles into indignant attention by opening his case with bold impertinence: “No one, my lords, who looks at this case with common fairness and honesty, can hesitate for a moment in declaring that there ought to be a new trial.” ”

“ Advocacy is indeed a life of industry. Each new success brings greater toil. Campbell, writing home from the Oxford Circuit, describes the weary round of his daily task. Some advocates suffer thus every day the court sits, whilst others sit round and suffer envy. ”

“ There was never a youngster with better backing than Francis North, afterwards Lord Keeper to Charles II., yet, as his biographer says, “observe his preparatives,” his earnest attendances at moots, his diligent waiting in that “dismal hole” the “corner chamber, one pair of stairs in Elm Court.”
In the same way his younger brother, Roger, though born in the ermine, so to speak, had to plod his way up like any other junior. It is good to be the brother of a Lord Chancellor, but it does not make a man an advocate.
Roger North’s autobiography is full of interest to the student of advocacy. ”