Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[990] Court of New Hampshire. I won them both, and I believe this was the first instance where a lawyer two years at the bar tried cases of such importance to a jury in the Circuit Court of the United States. I trust I may not appear boastful in making this narrative, because I had nothing to boast of save a devotion to my profession. I do not believe in genius carrying a man along in the practice of the law, and I want here to record for the benefit of the young men who come after me in the profession, that diligence, hard study, and careful thought are the only roads to success in any branch of the law except that possibly a turn for oratory may help the advocate. But the mere advocate, however brilliant, will lose the most cases although he may win the most verdicts.

A legal friend said to me: “I wish, Brother Butler, that in your book you would tell the profession those habits of life and conduct which led you to success as a lawyer.” I can do that in a few words:--

The closest application to the study of the law applicable to any case in hand, and careful thought of what the law ought to be as applied to the case, and then the most careful study of the books to see how it has been applied in like instances. I thought out my cases and thought out the law as applied to them, and then verified or corrected my thought by the opinions of the courts. The highest legal authority has declared the common law to be the perfection of common sense, so that any man who thoughtfully applies his common sense ought to know what the common law is. The only need he has of the cases in the books is not so much to guide himself as to use them to direct the minds of the judges to adopt his common sense as the law of the case, resulting from precedents. Therefore I want to repeat, find out the law of the case yourself first, and then by comparison of the cases pertaining to it decide it; perfect your sense as to what the law is. I by no means advise a young man to make himself simply what is known as a “case lawyer,” because lawyers of that class endeavor to remember and find a case like their own which has been decided and they rest there in their minds without other diligence or study to see how far that decision sustained the case.

There is a curious fact which has occurred in my own practice, and which I suspect has occurred in the practice of any experienced lawyer. I won more cases which I tried in behalf of the plaintiff