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"The legal system rests on the confrontation between discourses. Defense and Accusation are obliged to present adversative positions. That discursive dimension is even more real when what is being judged is a 'word crime', i.e. when speech is at the very center of the litigation. The rules regulating prohibited language are codified in various laws, but the interpretations of what can and cannot be said are as numerous as they are subjective. When investigating the legal domain linguistically, schematically three sub-sets of research appear: 1) everything that concerns writing up legal texts, which includes anticipating the potential interpretations of utterances ; 2) research concerning the validity of proof based on the speech of witnesses or the accused; 3) contentious discourses, whether the interpretation of a damaging utterance ( e.g. slander) or the resemblance between two texts (plagiary). It is this domain of contentious discourse that is explored here, by describing the requests for expertise to which the author was led to respond, and the conceptual and methodological tools deployed so as to provide a lawyer with a satisfactory answer to his/her question. In conclusion, an ethical reflection on the tensions between academic practices, that depend on continuous questioning, and presenting proof, which does not tolerate placing facts in perspective. "