RICERCHE SULL'AVVOCATURA E SUGLI ORDINI PROFESSIONALI IN AREA SUBALPINA NEI SECOLI XIX-XX

The idea to carry out a research on the history of professional associations, specifically on legal bar, originates from a research project presented some years ago by Consiglio Nazionale Forense (General Council of Lawyers of Italy) – assisted by lawyers and lecturers – who expressed their ambition to develop an historical overview on the origins and development of legal bar in Italy. The present work is not intended to carry out a detailed historical survey on each and every Piedmontese professional association. It is the object of the present research to describe the role of a lawyer in the 19th century society, to understand the way the profession changes constantly, the way legal bar is arranged and how it interacts with the surrounding political and social environment. Focusing on North Piedmont, the research on the documentation preserved at Courts produced completely different results according to the place in point. Certainly, most of the documentation is preserved in Turin, where trial records of the Consiglio dell’Ordine (General Council of the Lawyers) since the first meeting after the legislative decree in 1874 were found: such material is in good preservation status, probably because Turin professional association has always taken special care of such documentation. As far as Ivrea is concerned instead, differently from Turin – where papers are found in volumes – there is not an inventory and the documentation mainly consists of scattered papers, which allowed to reconstruct the activities of the association and the relationships between lawyers during the time in point. The analysis of these papers allowed to draw a picture of some lawyers, to understand legal bar and their relationships with colleagues, authorities and judiciary. In Biella and Novara no evidence of the association could be found. Thus, surveys on single professionals were carried out based on private inventories (Fondo Pampuri in Novara and Fondo Versano in Biella). In conclusion, not only should the present work be considered from an historical point of view, but also with reference to the current debate on the future of legal bar in the 21st century, taking into account that the knowledge of past lawyers can be an important step forward to understand (and discover) the identity of the contemporary lawyer.