In making an argument before a court or jury, remember that the most important thing is the statement of your case.  A case properly stated is a case nearly won.  Beware of digression.  It calls attention from your main idea.  It is a fault, too, which is well-nigh universal.  I advise every young lawyer, as a practise in accurate thought, to demonstrate a theorem of geometry every morning.

There is no such remorseless logic as that of logarithms.  It will produce a habit of definiteness, directness, and concentration invaluable to you.  The young gallants of a century ago used to practise fencing for an hour each morning.  Why should not you do the same thing in intellectual fencing—­you, the devotee of the noblest swordsmanship known to man, the swordsmanship of the law?

Do not waste too much time quoting precedents to a court; it produces weariness rather than conviction on the part of the judge, who himself is a daily maker of decisions and knows their value.  He knows the stifling mass of precedents, and sighs under them.  It is rare that more than two cases should be cited in oral argument on any given point.  Those cases ought to be the most controlling you can find—­not necessarily the latest.  They should be cases decided upon reason rather than upon authority.  Your true judge likes to syllogize.

Do not, however, go into a court without having thoroughly reviewed and mastered all the precedents bearing on every phase of your proposition.  It requires desperate labor to do this and will shorten your life; but such is the hard fate of the profession you choose, and such is the condition of our absurd system of multiplying reports.

Do not be what is known as a “case lawyer”—­an attorney who does not know the law as a science, but merely looks up precedents and texts concerning a particular case.  You may prevail in your “lawsuit,” but you will not be a lawyer.  Stick close to the elemental Blackstone.  You can never get along without Blackstone.  Do not read a condensed edition of that great commentator; it is like reading expurgated Shakespeare.

I understand that one of the Justices of the Supreme Court still reads Blackstone once each year.  This may be a fable, but I hope it is not.  You cannot do a better thing.  Thirty minutes each day will give you Blackstone from cover to cover in less than a year, with many holidays.  Few modern “text-books” are of permanent value.  Pomeroy’s “Equity Jurisprudence” is an exception.

But, of course, I cannot give here a list of those books which should be your daily food; any really educated lawyer will mention them to you.  The great mass of text-books are nothing more than digests.  But don’t miss the introduction to Stephens’ “Pleading,” and also the introduction to Stephens’ “Digest of the Law of Evidence.”  Both are classics and give you the reason and the spirit of our law in fascinating form.

Let your reading in the law be mainly upon the general principles of the common law.  The study of the civil law will also be helpful—­although English jurisprudence developed of and by itself with only moderate help from the Romans.  Reading statutes is unprofitable.  You should never answer a question or proceed in a case on the presumption that you remember the statute.  The rule of Sir Edwin Coke ought to be your rule.