Bookshop stands may be groaning with a spread of enticing books designed to catch the summer market but as Michael Gove put it recently in The Times, why go for new at all? Much better, he exhorted, to spend the holidays with old friends or filling gaps — those classics such as Bleak House or Crime and Punishment that you never quite managed.

There is a plethora of classics, modern and older, with a legal flavour. Richard Du Cann’s The Art of the Advocate remains the seminal work on courtroom presentation. Published in 1964, Du Cann recognises that “although all advocates are equal before the law, in court they continuously flaunt their inequalities”. From the case opening to the final speech, the book is still unsurpassed in its insight: as Du Cann puts it, “so much . . . depends on instinct and atmosphere”.

From beginner to old hand, this highly entertaining read at times shows its age — “a good dose of good thumping sarcasm, spiced with a short, sharp rhetorical question or two, have always been one of the most effective weapons in the advocate’s armoury” — but is well worth revisiting.

The technique of the advocate can be seen in practice in John Mortimer’s Famous Trials. This compilation, which includes essays selected by Mortimer of trials ranging from Crippen to William Joyce, first appeared in 1984. It presents snapshots of some of the greatest criminal advocates of their age, including Marshall Hall, defending in the murder trial of George Smith in 1915, who, it seems, in this defence “was so destitute of material” that even the great man could do little with the evidence. The verdict of guilty was returned within minutes.

What makes this selection of essays stand out from others is the quality of legal analysis. As well as evoking the solemn atmosphere of grave trials of the past, contributors analyse the legal submissions within the cases — in Smith, the authority of Makin on similar fact evidence is discussed, as well as its application in other notorious murder cases.

The difficult role of the advocate is developed in Geoffrey Robertson’s compelling book The Tyrannicide Brief, published in 2005, a comprehensively researched work on the barrister, John Cooke, who was given the dangerous task of prosecuting Charles I for treason. His argument that it was “not treason but professional duty to accept” the brief to prosecute the King will be well understood by any advocate.

Like Marshall Hall with his unwinnable defence brief for Smith, Cooke knew the dangers of articulating, as Robertson puts it, the “first modern legal argument against tyranny”, which still plays out today in the trial of Saddam Hussein. Upon the return of the monarchy, “Cooke had been executed for demanding the kind of justice that 350 years later the world at last would want; the ending of impunity for rulers responsible for mass-murdering their own people”. Robertson is an eloquent champion of Cooke’s cause.

Brave and eloquent advocates have always been the subject of legal novels, and two perhaps particularly epitomise the qualities of the advocate that are most needed when the might of State or power threatens to destroy the vulnerable.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winner, is often the first such novel on the lips of lawyers. In Atticus Finch, the defence lawyer who takes the case of a black man accused of the rape of a white girl in America’s Deep South at the height of that country’s racial tensions, Lee created the character from which many generations of defence lawyers gained early inspiration. Atticus explains: “The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom”, but the intriguing complexity of this novel is how the prejudices of society are not always solved in the courtroom and how juries will always be influenced by contemporary norms, however wrong.

No trawl of novels would be complete without a Grisham, and as is often the case with writers, the first are sometimes the best. In 1991, John Grisham published The Firm, an intoxicating story of a young trainee lawyer offered a position in a prestigious American law firm that was too good to be true. In fact, the firm was a front for serious crime and the new lawyer’s slow realisation of how deeply he was involved remains a chilling portrayal of corruption.

The Art of the Advocate, by Richard Du Cann, QC, Penguin; Famous Trials, selected by John Mortimer, QC, Penguin; The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson, QC, Vintage; To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Pan Books; The Firm, by John Grisham, Arrow.

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