Jean-Claude Zylberstein

in Léo Matarasso, Seminario del 6 dicembre 2008, Cedetim, Parigi

I met Léo Matarasso in the autumn of 1973 when I started my legal internship with Georges Kiejman, with whom he shared offices at 29 rue de Tournon in Paris, a stone’s throw from the Senate.
Léo was the balancing factor or if you prefer “peacemaker” of this happy household sometimes marked by the irritation of one or another as it often happens in law firms.
I think I have benefited enormously from his company: unlike Georges K., who is passionate and capable of identifying with his case, Léo’s example made me understand that it is useful to know how to stand back from a case and – above all – from a client.
I still remember the afternoons spent together in the firm’s library where we talked about press law – his favourite field – but also literature or painting – his culture was limitless, and I can still hear his voice with its delicious accent which everyone remembers saying to me when I was despairing of not having memorized an article of the civil code or the law on copyright “don’t try to learn by heart: by the time you have memorized it, the text will have been modified!”He was still telling me when I told him about my dismay when a directive from such and such a person was followed by another contradictory one: “It’s like in the army, before executing an order, wait for the counter-order!
I quickly became independent and left the rue de Tournon in 1976 to set up my own business, but I never missed an opportunity to come and visit him and if possible to carry out some work for him at the Law Courts when, with age, I also became tired. But he was valiant until the end and I remember the respect with which the magistrates listened to him.
When I learned that he was going to stop his activity, I went to see him and as he was willing to get rid of his precious archives of press law jurisprudence – a real bible on the subject – I told him that it would be an honour for me if he would agree to entrust them to me. And so I became the lucky custodian of five large yellow canvas files with straps, which I had used so many times for my own press law cases, a law with such a particular procedure and of which Léo Matarasso had been one of the masters.

Zylberstein, Jean-Claude

in:

<strong>Léo Matarasso,
Seminario del 6 dicembre 2008, Cedetim, Parigi
Milano, maggio 2009</strong>