Keep your office in as perfect condition as yourself.  Remember that it is your workshop.  Put all your extra money into books.  There is no adornment of an office equal to a library, just as there is no adornment of a mechanic’s shop equal to his tools.  You know what you think of a doctor when you find his office equipped with the latest appliances.

Do not permit your office to be a loafing place, even for your fellow lawyers.  You cannot afford to cultivate professional courtesy at the expense of the discipline of your office.  It is nothing to your client that your friends find your society so charming that they seek the felicity of your conversation even in your office.  Or, rather, it is something to your client—­he wants his case won and he thinks that will take all your time.  And so it will.

Be very careful of the places you frequent.  Remember that Pericles was never seen except upon the street leading to the Senate House.  Don’t imitate anybody—­be yourself.  Still, if you must have the stimulus of imitation, pick out a man like Pericles for your model.

Depend upon yourself; do not call into council another attorney.  This is a point on which most lawyers will disagree with me.  Nevertheless, if you are not competent to handle your case, you have done wrong to open an independent office.  If you call in another attorney, every probability is that you will suggest all the solutions yourself and in reality win the case; but your old and distinguished associate will get all the credit.  But you need all the credit for work which you really do.

See well to your evidence before you go into the trial of a cause.  Be very cautious on cross-examination.  It is the most powerful but most delicate and dangerous instrument known to the surgery of the law.  Do not bluster, “bull-doze,” or browbeat a witness; there is nothing in it.  You only make the jury sympathize with the person abused.  Remember that an American loves nothing so much as fair play.  When on a jury, he is apt to regard you and the witness as adversaries, you the stronger and with immense advantage.

Ask few questions on cross-examination.  Employ the Socratic method always.  Ask only those questions the logical conclusion of which is irresistible, and stop there.  Don’t press the conclusion on the witness.  It is your province to show that in your argument.

A timid witness, whom you know to be telling the truth, may often be confused by cross-examination and made to make a false statement; but this you have no right, as an honorable attorney, to make him do.  A just judge ought to stop you if you try it.  To confuse a witness whom you know to be telling the truth is not skill; it is a trick, and a very miserable trick, whose performance requires neither real ability nor learning.

Think what a tremendous intellectual effort the properly conducted lawsuit is.  You must know your case; you must know your evidence; you must know each witness as a person and each item of his testimony; you must know the law applicable to your general proposition, and the general law upon its various ramifications; you must study the witnesses of the other side; and, almost more important than any of these, you must study that wonderful combination of intellect, prejudice, and passion called the jury.