Definition of "legist"

There were a number of lawyers of the older type, men in sharp contrast and antagonism to the younger legists of the new American school.

1933 September, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Second Conference at Basra, 1978”, in The Shape of Things to Come, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 3rd book (The World Renascence: The Birth of the Modern State), page 309

‘King and kingdom,’ concurred d'Aguesseau, wisest of wise eighteenth-century legists, ‘form a single entity.’

2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 3