THE ORAL PRESENTATION
Pleading is the time lawyers use to present the parties' claims before judges, but it is also the art of summarizing, synthesizing and presenting cases.
It is one of the symbols of the legal profession, if not the SYMBOL of the said profession.
My colleague, Maître Emile POLLACK from the Bar of MARSEILLE, would have answered the question: "How do you plead?" in the following way: "Standing up and in French".
It is true, however, that each lawyer has his or her own technique, his or her own style: the angry, the shy, the tenor, the low, the amusing, the sad, the vindictive, the mocking, as many pleadings as there are lawyers, as many pleadings as there are cases.
Today, the quality of pleading is no longer measured by the number of Latin quotations used and the outbursts it elicits. The theatricality of the "beautiful" or "great" pleaders would seem obsolete to anyone not aiming for a place at the Comédie Française.
The interests of the client are paramount, and the lawyer must now plead "useful".
We are therefore far from the learned, convoluted, pompous, embarrassing compositions that caused a person attending a hearing to say: "that after hearing their speeches, I was no more informed than before of the law of the parties or even of the facts of the case, and as I complained of my lack of intelligence before the judges, they consoled me by reassuring me that they had not understood anything themselves. (Quoted in J. HAMELIN and A. DAMIEN. Les règles de la profession d'avocat. n°249, p.241, Dalloz, 8th edition).
It is therefore necessary to be convincing and not wearisome.
All the more so since, according to article 440 paragraph 3 of the New Code of Civil Procedure, the President of the court has the power to "stop the pleadings", in other words to withdraw the floor from the lawyers "when the court considers itself enlightened. ». This text may raise doubts about the freedom of speech of the lawyer, but it makes me think of a tasty anecdote:
"A lawyer had been arguing for three hours on the clock, drowning his audience in an interminable jurisprudence: "...I will also quote, gentlemen, a seventeenth judgment, the one rendered on May 3, 1938, by the Orleans Court... ». President PERIVIER: "Orléans, five minutes' adjournment. The hearing is suspended" (Quoted in Jérôme DUHAMEL, Le bêtisier du XXème siècle, p. 69, JC LATES, 1995)
In the end, an anonymous quote sums up what an argument should be: "An argument should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be followed.
Pleading is not, therefore, an academic speech, but an ordered eloquence ordered to an end, which is the conviction of the judge.
It is the art of exposition and reasoning, it demonstrates, it convinces the court by a rapid and objective summary, that the case of which it has just heard the presentation, is simple, good and just. Its purpose is to make the magistrate, until then impartial, partisan of the party that the lawyer defends, even before he has examined the files that will be entrusted to him and that will be the accompaniment of any good pleading. (ESTOUP, "Les dossiers de plaidoirie": Gaz Pal 1990, 1, Doct. P.202)
