VI. Streit um Anwaltskosten in der frühen Neuzeit: Teil 1: Methodische Grundlegung, Anwaltsverträge und Bezahlungsarten
In: Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung, Volume 132, Issue 1, p. 152-218
ISSN: 2304-4861
Argument about legal fees in the early modern period. Part 1: Methodic foundation, advocates' contracts and payment modalities. Early modern records of proceedings consist mainly of advocates' legal papers. Nevertheless, one does know just a little about the procurators and advocates and their cooperation with the legal parties, especially if they were no aristocrats, but subjects. However, if the parties did not pay their advocate and the advocates then asserted their fee claim in court, a number of records of proceedings have regularly survived and provide full information about the advocate's and client's relation. Next to the proxy, there was the commission as actual advocates' contract. Regardless of the normative standards, the procurators drafted their contracts mostly as continuing obligations in addition with a yearly fixed fee. The contribution analyses and compares the practical contracting at the Imperial Chamber Court with the Imperial Aulic Council and the Wismar Court of Appeal. Herein the Arrha, an additional item on the invoice, and the attempt to assert contingency fees come into focus. Methodically, the paper pleads in favour of the history of legal practice, which in its valuations renounces itself mostly from the standards of normative sources.