To be a good advocate, then, one must be in the habit of looking at one's own case from a judicial point of view, and since a judge's direct concern is with the community of law, an advocate who sees things from the judge's perspective and attends to his concerns will be careful to frame his own arguments so as to emphasize the congruence between his client's interests and the interests of the legal community as a whole. Every good judge knows the difference between a wise argument and a merely clever one. A clever argument shows inventiveness in the way it uses legal and other materials to promote a client's cause. A wise argument establishes a convergence between that cause and the community of law, the community the law both expresses and sustains and whose existence it is the special obligation of judges to protect. In the cases they decide, judges are likely to give arguments of the latter sort a special weight, for these are made from their own perspective and address the issue that is of paramount importance from a judicial point of view. Wise arguments, in short, win cases, and if you are an advocate, the only way to ensure that your arguments exhibit wisdom with any regularity is to acquire the habit of looking at your client's case from the point of view of a judge whose job it is to superintend the legal system as a whole.
(Anthony T. Kronman, "Living in the Law," The University of Chicago Law Review 54 [summer 1987]: 835-76, at 870-1)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 