PURPOSE: To obtain a liquid crystal compound of high optical purity, by reacting a specific benzoic acid as a raw material with a chloride, such as thionyl chloride, and a catalytic amount of dimethylformamide to form an acid chloride and reacting the resultant acid chloride with alcohols in the presence of a base.

CONSTITUTION: A benzoic acid expressed by formula I (A is 1W18C alkyl and alkyloxy; B is CH2O or OCH2; m and n are 1 or 2) is reacted with COCl2, oxalyl chloride, PCl3, PCl5, BCl3 or POCl2 in the presence of a catalytic amount of dimethylformamide or dimethyl sulfoxide to provide a compound expressed by formula II, which is then reacted with alcohols expressed by the formula R-OH (R is 1W18C alkyl and preferably optically active group), such as methyl D-lactate, in the presence of a base to afford the aimed liquid crystal compound expressed by formula III. Furthermore, attention is paid to liquid crystals in which the substituent group R in formula III is an optically active group as ferroelectric liquid crystals exhibiting chiral smectic phase and this method provides an useful synthetic method therefor.