The main purpose of this article is the answer to the following question: was Cicero the jurist or not? This problem was controversial for many years between romanists, historians and theoreticians of rhetoric as well. The author puts two hypothesis – firstly, the historical one and secondly, the modern one. In the light of the first Cicero was not the jurist, because he played in the court the role of Roman advocatus and the Roman iurisconsultus. From the modern perspective is the problem more complicated – he was the jiurst in modern sense, even if he was not the lawyer in today’s meaning.