Paper Short Abstract:

How do asylum lawyers relate to the truth when providing advice to migrants? What role does trust play in the judicial socialization of lay clients? This paper explores the lawyer's strategies for training applicants, through the analysis of the sentence “I believe you, but judges won’t”.

Paper Abstract:

This paper aims to explore how asylum lawyers relate in practice to the truth when providing advice to migrants. Mainly, it questions the role of trust in the judicial socialization of lay clients. Based on ethnographic research conducted with lawyers who plead at the French National Court of Asylum, it discusses the strategies employed by the lawyer to bring out evidence from the applicant’s statements and to prepare him to answer the judges’ questions. It investigates the lawyer's reflexive methods, showing how he adjusts his strategies depending on the applicant’s story, personality, and sociological background. In particular, it examines how the lawyer addresses the truth issue with the practical purpose of making the request credible. The analysis focuses on one interaction in a law firm, where the lawyer prepares her client for the forthcoming hearing. The sentence “I believe you, but judges won’t”, pronounced by the lawyer, is analyzed as a key example of an expression of a productive contrast: a first-person rhetorical assertion of a belief to inspire the applicant’s trust and a third-person evocation of the judge’s possible divergent interpretation on the case. It shows that the lawyer refers to the judge’s point of view as a shifting strategy to express her own rationality and expertise. By so doing, the lawyer shows the path to her client to be a good applicant, who learns to see himself as the judge will see him.