The tenor of the bar, a man of the left who had once been a minister under François Mitterrand, was an emblematic figure both in courtrooms and in political and media circles.

Among his peers, Julie Couturier, the president of Paris, honored on Twitter an "outstanding lawyer" who "will remain one of the great figures of the criminal bar". The president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, greeted "with emotion his career and his commitment to justice", while the journalist Maïtena Biraben recalled his "eye that curls".

His detractors mocked the pathological need to seduce this lawyer who defined himself as "The man who wanted to be loved", in his biographical account written with journalist Vanessa Schneider (Grasset) and published in 2021.

Born in Paris on August 12, 1932, he is the son of a craftsman who died in deportation (he called himself a "Jew of the diaspora and Berrichon"). A poor young man, he did his secondary education in Saint-Amand-Montrond (Cher).

After graduating from higher education in public law, he became a lawyer at the Paris Court of Appeal in 1954 and became second secretary of the Conférence du stage.

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In civil matters, where his causticity makes him formidable, he is a specialist in literary property, publishing, cinema, and press affairs. He was notably the lawyer of Gallimard editions for many years such as that of Gaston Defferre, Simone Signoret, Eugène Ionesco or Roland Barthes.

In criminal matters, he liked to say that his clients were "atypical". Georges Kiejman defended the far-left activist Pierre Goldman, acquitted of the double murder of pharmacists on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir at the end of his second trial in 1976.

He also represented the interests of the United States in the trial of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the alleged leader of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions (FARL), sentenced to life imprisonment for the Middle Eastern attacks in Paris in 1986.

He also defended the Italian autonomists, the Cahiers du cinéma, the Nouvelle Vague, Robert de Niro, the prefect Yves Bonnet, the family of Malik Oussekine, the student killed on the sidelines of the demonstrations against the Devaquet laws in 1986, the children of General Oufkir detained in Morocco, the Aubrac couple, Charlie Hebdo...

In May 1991, this dandy became Minister Delegate for Communication, after a six-month stint as Minister Delegate to the Minister of Justice. He was Minister Delegate for International Cooperation and Development between 1992 and 1993.

In 2011, this man of the left had defended Jacques Chirac in the trial of fictitious jobs at the City of Paris.

Married in third marriage to the journalist Laure de Broglie, with whom he has three children, this seducer has lived with Françoise Giroud, 15 years his senior, and was the husband of the actress Marie-France Pisier.

© 2023 AFP