legist

From Middle French légiste, from Medieval Latin lēgista, from Latin lex (“law”). Compare legal.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈliːdʒɪst/

legist (plural legists)

1. One skilled in the law.
   • 1933 September, H G Wells, “The Second Conference at Basra, 1978”, in The Shape of Things to Come, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC, 3rd book (The World Renascence: The Birth of the Modern State), page 309:

     There were a number of lawyers of the older type, men in sharp contrast and antagonism to the younger legists of the new American school.

2. A writer on law; also, a lawmaker, a legislator.
   • 2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 3:

     ‘King and kingdom,’ concurred d'Aguesseau, wisest of wise eighteenth-century legists, ‘form a single entity.’

• gilets, legits

legist

1. legist: one skilled in the law
   • 1484, William Caxton (translator), Aesop’s Fables, “The Wulf whiche made a fart” in The Fables of Aesop as first printed by William Caxton in 1484, edited by Joseph Jacobs, London: David Nutt, 1889, Volume II, p. 162,

     Item my fader was no legist ne never knewe the lawes, ne also man of Justyce, and to gyve sentence of a plee, I wold entremete me, and fayned my self grete Justycer, but I knewe neyther, a, ne, b,

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Borrowed from French légiste.

legist m or n (feminine singular legistă, masculine plural legiști, feminine and neuter plural legiste)

1. forensic