13,283 views
Since 1818, the Paris Bar has organized an eloquence competition, the Conférence du Stage. It is a question of selecting the twelve best speakers of the year from among one hundred and fifty candidates. Clothilde, Laure and Ambroise are young lawyers. They are barely thirty years old and they are among the lucky ones. For them, as for all their colleagues, speech is a working tool. It is with the speech that they must convince the court to defend their clients. But the love of words is not the only reason why Clothilde, Laure and Ambroise took the competition. For an entire year, they will be at the Palais de Justice every day as court-appointed lawyers to defend the most destitute. Defendants who cannot afford a lawyer themselves and to whom the state provides one, thanks to legal aid. During the twelve months of the Conférence du Stage, the ex officio commissions offer these young lawyers the opportunity to plead in important criminal cases and even for some of them before a criminal court. Clothilde, Laure and Ambroise will remain former secretaries of the Conférence for life, a title that they will write on their business card as a sign of experience, recognition and notoriety. So many good reasons that push other young lawyers to follow in their footsteps. Among them, Aurélie and Sabrina. Aurélie has already taken the exam three times. Three failures. Sabrina, she is taking it for the first time. Both dream of shining with eloquence to open the doors of this prestigious institution that represents the Conférence du Stage. An institution that, for nearly two hundred years, has trained many leading lawyers. Director: DOMINIQUE LENGLART