It is almost dark this October evening when Clarisse Serre sticks her head in the doorway.
In the waiting room of her office, her client finds her little boy to whom she says she has finished "with the doctor", so as not to explain that his parents are dealing with justice.
"I have ten minutes with the gentleman, and I'm yours," the lawyer warns me.
Nothing to do with the hushed Parisian cabinets where one avoids that the customers cross.
In this small street with the low houses of Bobigny, in addition to the plaque stamped "Lawyers", there is nothing to indicate that we have not taken the wrong path.
At the bottom of the garden where a banana tree is planted, a fountain and a light garland hung like a guinguette, the small building could shelter a couple of sores who have deserted Paris.
Of the'
Here, we go to see Me Serre almost without an appointment, to say hello on returning from tobacco or to submit a promise of employment for a friend in detention.
In her office lined with photos of her life as a lawyer, all eras combined, Clarisse Serre recognizes that this entry sometimes lowers the pressure a notch.
Soon she will buy a turtle.
“A real Zen garden!” she laughs.
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“We should not decorate lawyers”
She herself looks softer than on the cover of her book, which appeared in mid-September.
The lioness of the bar
(Éditions Sonatine), black and white full-face portrait, displays a hard face despite a small heart in brilliants around the neck.
“I am a woman, I do criminal work, I work in 9-3, so what?”
highlighted.
The temptation is great to play on the contradictions it presents to us.
Why settle in Bobigny while living on the left bank of Paris, where she did all her classes?
“I wanted to redo the immediate appearance.
And perhaps to put into perspective the chance that I have to live there.
And this little decoration on the buttonhole of her cold woolen jacket, another coquetry?
“The merit, I should not have accepted it, but it is a sin of pride.
My dad had it.
We shouldn't decorate lawyers, the real admirable thing is a reconstruction of a face,
This, yes."
End of the game, the lioness is straight in her boots.
Read alsoYoung lawyers on the verge of a nervous breakdown
Clarisse Serre grew up in Paris with a stay-at-home mother and a father who made a career out of banking.
When she followed her calling, she said she wanted to "do law."
“Penalist, they did not know.”
She assumes to have a “very restrictive” vision of her profession.
"The lawyer, the real one, she swears, is the one who makes the assizes."
If she says she represents "one day the widow and the next day the assassin", she works most of the time on the defense side, one more subtlety among the "real lawyers" who do criminal matters.
Caps of organized crime, sexual aggressors, mobsters, violent spouses, she does not sort.
The fantasy of my life would be to participate in a go fast, this transport of narcotics at very high speed to avoid police checks
Clarisse Serre
She defended a cocaine godfather or the Hornec clan, siblings of organized crime bosses in Paris.
From there to nourish a certain fascination?
“The fantasy of my life would be to participate in a
go fast
, this transport of narcotics at very high speed to avoid police checks”, she laughs.
To touch this adrenaline of which his customers speak so much to him.
“But I never will.
The thugs just allow me to live thrillers live.
To stay on the safe side, she addresses them all, keeps a distance, and is furious when she meets a young lawyer with a too plunging neckline in the visiting room “coming to visit guys who never see a girl”.
No familiarity, no ambiguity, and, above all, tenacity in the work are points to which she constantly returns during her story.
“I wanted to tell behind the scenes.
To show that you can't become a star at the bar overnight.
The reality of lawyers is also small firms of shoemakers.
I do criminal justice to get the guys out of trouble.
I take the metro, the train.
Over the course of his audiences, his Facebook account becomes a real Tour de France.
Same thing when she details the months to come: long assizes in Bobigny alongside three weeks of trials in Metz, one or two days a week in the cabinet, and pleadings every day.
On this road, her husband of twenty-five years – an editor who has never seen her plead – sometimes found her in tears without knowing what to answer to “Why am I inflicting this on myself?”
He knows that she always returns there.
long assizes in Bobigny rub shoulders with three weeks of trials in Metz, one or two days a week in the cabinet, and pleadings every day.
On this road, her husband of twenty-five years – an editor who has never seen her plead – sometimes found her in tears without knowing what to answer to “Why am I inflicting this on myself?”
He knows that she always returns there.
long assizes in Bobigny rub shoulders with three weeks of trials in Metz, one or two days a week in the cabinet, and pleadings every day.
On this road, her husband of twenty-five years – an editor who has never seen her plead – sometimes found her in tears without knowing what to answer to “Why am I inflicting this on myself?”
He knows that she always returns there.
I believed in it, knowing that it would be complicated
Clarisse Serre
This profession of which she calls herself a "slave", she wanted it.
In 1995, she took the oath.
Shortly after, the lawyers Pierre Haïk and Jacqueline Laffont put her foot in the stirrup.
Every day is different, she never gets bored.
All in an atmosphere of total trust.
So much so that one day, the tenor said to him: "You are going to the assizes in court, and I will join you."
Not seeing him arrive, she calls him and hears herself answer: "Ah yes, I can't, you will plead."
Business arrives, she never dares to refuse, even at the last minute.
Around, everything is canceled, postponed.
Booking a theater is impossible.
She trudges, runs the prisons.
Evry, Meaux, Creteil.
Five years pass like this.
Until that day in 2001, when, pregnant with her first daughter, she decided to leave.
At this rate, a family life is unthinkable.
A colleague warns her: "You don't think about it!"
She hears him, and yet turns on her heels.
She accepts part-time, then occupies an office boulevard des Invalides, in Paris.
“I believed in it, knowing that it would be complicated.”
The piece of furniture in front of her, unearthed at Habitat, has twelve boxes and only three are filled.
She's worried.
Questions then never asked come to knock his mind.
"How will I do ?"
So far, no one wanted to do criminal, every morning there were ten letters of appointment by inmates and no fear of missing out.
Today,
this mother of two girls and a boy, aged 17 to 21, retraces the path taken: "The friends with whom I started, it took me ten years to catch up with them," she slips.
From move to move, she took the small piece of furniture.
It is now in the basement of the little house in Bobigny, like a talisman.
"We don't see it coming"
"And, one day, the doors open, and you don't know why."
If she ignores it, some colleagues know for her, praising her stubbornness, her way of not letting go.
“We do not see it coming, analyzes lawyer Laure Heinich.
It is not impressive in the sense of certain cold lawyers, in the back of which one would not see typing.
It is the mastery of the file that impresses.
She keeps an intact memory of their first meeting, during the trial of the rotating Fontenay-sous-Bois, in Créteil, in 2012. During these three weeks of painful trial, the tension is terrible.
Heinich is on the side of the civil parties, Serre de la Défense.
“She was taking a crazy place.
There were fourteen defendants, she had her own, and gave the impression of defending them all, ”recalls her colleague.
To the point of having to specify during certain interventions “I am not Mr. X’s lawyer, but…”, and his designated colleague ends up answering him “If you continue, you will become one.”
However, at the heart of this incessant speech, Clarisse Serre brings to light facts hitherto passed over in silence.
“A real ringworm, but it irritated me to be so good”, recognizes the representative of the opposing party who has become her friend.
I prefer lioness to hyena, but the magistrates still think I'm a pain in the ass!
Clarisse Serre
In her pleadings, her style is raw, and she sticks to it.
A deep voice but barely, an overflowing energy.
Clarisse Serre insists on the fact of not being "not an intellectual".
“She does not theorize on the profession to excess, with an almost more physical approach of impregnation of the environment”, observes Christian Saint-Palais, colleague who notably found himself at his side in the affair of the escape of the robber Antonio Ferrara.
“If she smells that what she has to say is going to be effective the moment she thinks about it, she's going to drop it.
Capturing the atmosphere of a courtroom is learned little and nowhere.
In this, she has a nature very suited to criminal defense.”
Would the "lioness" have received her nickname for her instinctive side more than roaring?
“I prefer lioness to hyena,
but the magistrates still think that I am a pain in the ass!”, she confesses.
And Saint-Palais to temporize: “She is a great professional, very respected by the various judicial floors.
They are happy to see it happen, even if they know they will be pushed around.
“She has an inexhaustible capacity for indignation”
The criminal lawyer is not one of those to whom we say ““Yes master, we will come back to it”, hoping that she forgets”, says Lille lawyer Julien Delarue, who accompanied her in a jewelry store robbery case. in Douay.
“She has an inexhaustible capacity for indignation, he notes.
It is an almost uninterrupted flow, but never in vain.
In the media, where she appears more in recent years, she does not temporize for the peace of the debates.
So this sequence from 2018 on BFM TV where she takes over the president of the Women's Foundation, Anne-Cécile Mailfert, when she calls her "Madam": "Master", she corrects, annoyed that this this speaks of feminicide in the context of the Jonathan Daval affair.
Four years later, his position is unchanged:
"Even though no one can condone that a woman be killed, in this context, he does not kill a woman or women, he kills HIS wife."
The following year, she will also publish a text entitled “No, feminicide should not be criminally qualified.”
Here or there, her outspokenness does not prevent her from being loved.
“Like an immediately sympathetic woman, if you like free people and not encumbered by conveniences”, adds Saint-Palais.
At the end of September, during the signing of his book, the brasserie Les Deux Palais, opposite the Paris Court of Appeal, was full of the small judicial world.
“The clerk, the judge, the attendant who handles the shopping carts, the person in charge of the library were there.
I said to myself: “Wow, there are all the floors!”, recalls Laure Heinich.
Her generous nature makes Clarisse Serre a friend who sends text messages to colleagues during trials that concern them, knows the first names of their children without having met them.
“She talks about others in an ego-stricken medium,” they all conclude in unison.
66-5, the series of which Clarisse Serre is the muse
After the success of
Engrenages
, screenwriter Anne Landois opted for a color that was more judicial than police.
It is while attending one of the hearings of Me Clarisse Serre, before a court specializing in the largest cases of delinquency, that she finds her subject: a story of cocaine importation and unclear police infiltration.
During this trial, the lawyer intervened with her colleague Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard.
For
66-5
, title in reference to the article which protects the confidentiality of the exchanges between the lawyer and his client, Anne Landois imagined a heroine young lawyer, Roxane Bauer, interpreted by Alice Isaaz.
After studying in Paris, a stint in a large firm and a marriage with a son of a family, who ends up accused of rape, this class defector returns to Bobigny, where she grew up, and becomes the lawyer for thugs.
Directed by Danielle Arbid (
Simple Passion
) and Keren Ben Rafael (
Beating Heart
), Season 1 shows Seine-Saint-Denis from a new angle.
Broadcast early 2023.
"She does everything thoroughly, without ever approximation"
"It's extraordinary what is happening to me," explains Clarisse Serre.
For a long time, she was this good student glued to gossip.
"I waited until I was my age to be paid for what I love to do."
This chatterbox is what showrunner Anne Landois, behind the hit series Engrenages, came to look for.
Clarisse Serre was a consultant for three seasons.
Has been entrusted with a short stint as an extra in season 5: a mute lawyer, a real role of composition.
She fought for Joséphine Karlsson (played by Audrey Fleurot) not to be in a skirt and heels, but as a “real life lawyer”.
She lost.
The screenwriter and the lawyer are despite everything left for a new adventure broadcast in the first half of 2023 on Canal +.
During their meetings,
sometimes spaced several weeks apart, the criminal lawyer was always aware of the scenario at the stage it had reached.
"She does everything to the full, without ever approximation," explains Anne Landois.
At the end of October, they toasted together at the end of filming drink.
Clarisse Serre had the vertigo of emptiness.
“I experienced boredom once.
It was in Mexico, it was 40 degrees, I only had one book by Bernanos to read.
It lasted three days, and I never want that to happen to me again."
Since that day in Los Cabos, she has had to do two things at the same time.
Attention, spoiler: after the book and the series, she already has a new idea.
explains Anne Landois.
At the end of October, they toasted together at the end of filming drink.
Clarisse Serre had the vertigo of emptiness.
“I experienced boredom once.
It was in Mexico, it was 40 degrees, I only had one book by Bernanos to read.
It lasted three days, and I never want that to happen to me again."
Since that day in Los Cabos, she has had to do two things at the same time.
Attention, spoiler: after the book and the series, she already has a new idea.
explains Anne Landois.
At the end of October, they toasted together at the end of filming drink.
Clarisse Serre had the vertigo of emptiness.
“I experienced boredom once.
It was in Mexico, it was 40 degrees, I only had one book by Bernanos to read.
It lasted three days, and I never want that to happen to me again."
Since that day in Los Cabos, she has had to do two things at the same time.
Attention, spoiler: after the book and the series, she already has a new idea.
Since that day in Los Cabos, she has had to do two things at the same time.
Attention, spoiler: after the book and the series, she already has a new idea.
Since that day in Los Cabos, she has had to do two things at the same time.
Attention, spoiler: after the book and the series, she already has a new idea.