On 30 October 1853 he was appointed deputy prosecutor at the Tribunal of the Seine in Paris, where he showed his remarkable talent as an orator.

In August 1857 Pinard prosecuted Charles Baudelaire for his 1857 collection of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal.

[4] In April 1859 Pinard was named deputy prosecutor at the imperial court, and on 3 October 1861 he was promoted to the grade of advocate-general, and appointed procureur general in Douai.

He was in favor of a broad union between ultramontane Catholics who disagreed with imperial policy towards Rome and Bonapartists who supported reform, a combination that was opposed by Rouher.

[1] Pinard drafted a new press law in which prison sentences were replaced by fines, and pushed it through against opposition from Rouher.

He made a clumsy attempt to use force to suppress a demonstration commemorating the death of Jean-Baptiste Baudin, which destroyed his authority.

[6] He was one of the small minority that protested the deposition of the emperor Napoleon III after the French lost the Battle of Sedan.