A logographer (, logographos) in Classical Athens was a professional author of forensic speeches composed for delivery by litigants in the popular courts. The modern term speechwriter is a close functional analogue. Most evidence concerns Athens in the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, though similar practices occurred elsewhere in the Greek world.
Historical setting and procedure
Athenian litigation was conducted by the parties themselves before large citizen juries, there was no class of professional trial attorneys who examined witnesses and argued in their clients' stead. Documentary evidence (laws, decrees, contracts) and witness depositions were read aloud by the court clerk. There was no cross-examination in the modern sense, and written depositions carried weight according to the perceived standing of the witnesses. The term "logographer" is also used for early prose chroniclers, so modern scholarship distinguishes forensic logographers from historiographical logographers to avoid ambiguity.