quotations about lawyers
It is the business of a lawyer to find a hole to creep out of any law that is in his way; and if there is no hole, to make one.
W. OUSELEY
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attributed, Day's Collacon
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Lawyers are pulled in various directions by a diverse cast of characters. The client wants to win, but doesn't want to spend much money doing it. The client believes that the lawyer's fees are outrageous and pays the fees sporadically and only after much complaining. The opposing lawyer's sworn duty is to assail the lawyer in every way possible, make the lawyer look foolish, deride his every statement, and run him out of town on a rail if possible. The judge has no patience with the lawyer, sets impossible deadlines and demands consistent obeisance. Back at the office, the lawyer faces all of the challenges of running a business. The various associations prod the lawyer to join committees and perform pro bono work, in addition to monitoring the lawyer's conduct to ensure that he has not run afoul of the Canons of Professional Ethics. All the while, the specter of a malpractice claim hovers over the lawyer with Damoclean menace.
KENNETH MENENDEZ
Taming the Lawyers
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As a lawyer, I was paid to write persuasively. I was paid to take the same set of facts the other side had and make you believe that my version of it was true, while the other side was doing the exact same thing.
DAVID BALDACCI
interview, The Strand
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The office of the lawyer ... is too delicate, personal and confident to be occupied by a corporation.
ROBERT H. JACKSON
"Functions of the Trust Company in the Field of Law"
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Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste; they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Democracy in America
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Lawyers are not just passive witnesses to the wrongs of their clients. Not only must they tolerate projects of which they disapprove, but they must actually lend their professional efforts to those projects.
TIM DARE
The Counsel of Rogues
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Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The God-Seeker
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Never enter into an argument with a lawyer, for, of necessity, it is time lost; not that lawyers are fools--far from it--but that their intellects are concentrated in the endeavour to make sophistries pass for truths.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
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I know you lawyers can with ease,
Twist words and meanings as you please;
That language, by your skill made pliant,
Will bend to favour every client;
That 'tis the fee directs the sense,
To make out either side's pretense.
JOHN GAY
"The Dog and the Fox"
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Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Islanders and the Fisher of Men
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Lawyers ... have the singular distinction of being able to play the hero and villain at the same time. Depending on where you stand in a courthouse.
LENOX MHLANGA
"Are lawyers paid to lie on our behalf?", The Chronicle, April 2, 2016
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Good trial lawyers are like writers with heavily plotted stories and sharply defined characters. They lay out each detail precisely to create an illusion of seamless inevitability, leaving no room for doubt, not possibility for an alternate ending.
ELYSSA EAST
Dogtown
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Those lawyers and men of learning, and monied men, that talk so finely, and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pills, expect to get into Congress themselves; they expect to be the managers of this Constitution, and get all the power and the money into their own hands, and then they will swallow up all us little folks, like the great Leviathan.
AMOS SINGLETARY
attributed, The Case Against Lawyers
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As the American market for lawyers appears to have dried up, more than ever new lawyers need to set aside unrealistic expectations of being a savior and embrace the legal work that actually needs doing. In the process, they might help some people.
KATIE ROSE
"American lawyers have an Atticus Finch complex, and it's killing the profession", Quartz, March 31, 2016
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The law is like Swiss cheese. The holes are the truth, and lawyers are like roaches crawling through the cheese. You can use the holes to get from one part of the cheese to another, but you can't eat the holes, you can only eat the cheese.
DON NIGRO
Tainted Justice
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Lawyers are a privileged class for only lawyers can, for reward, take on the causes of others and bring them before the courts.
JOSEPH SHERMAN
"Why are Lawyers and other Professionals in Sierra Leone derailing the Progress of Diasporans and Contributing to the Retrogression of the Country?", The Salone Monitor, April 6, 2016
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Lawyers are doubters, skeptics; not in a bad sense. But they never know any thing absolutely and utterly without qualifications or modifications.
G. N. TILLMAN
"Cooperation Among Lawyers"
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Robot lawyers would make sense given the tricky road we're inevitably facing when it comes to robotics law and maybe even robot rights. If robots become the subjects of laws and protections, then perhaps they should learn how to navigate the system. Of course, as with everything else, we run the risk of being surpassed in skill and acumen by our robotic counterparts. Although by then, robot judges may be banging gavels and silencing courtrooms, as well as naysayers.
JOELLE RENSTROM
"Robots Are Taking White Collar Jobs, Too", The Daily Beast, June 4, 2016
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If you want to kill an idea without being identified as the assassin, suggest that the legal department take a look at it.
SCOTT ADAMS
Dilbert Gives You the Business
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There is, then, no use in endeavouring to blind yourself to the fact that lawyers are looked upon with little favour by the public. There are, doubtless, various legitimate sources of the aversion entertained towards them. One of these is the "mystery" which always hangs, and always has hung, about the lawyer's "craft." I take this to be one of the very worst attributes of the profession. It is one which has always been fostered and encouraged by the members of the profession themselves. To be the favoured medium for invoking justice is, certainly, to be placed in a somewhat imposing position; and to shroud oneself in the sable gown of mystery, allowing only glimpses of one's sacred virtue occasionally to peep forth, is, doubtless, calculated to strike an awe into beholders. The priests of old did it, and very successfully imposed upon the multitude, till ONE came who taught truth in a few plain words, which the simplest could understand. The members of the profession forget that there is nothing so very sacred about their vocation, that the multitude will be content to look upon their mysterious scrolls, and phrases, and their incomprehensible proceedings, with the same reverence which the priests of old were able to command as the ministers of religion. I fancy the multitude tolerate the mystery which envelopes all persons and things legal, chiefly because they regard lawyers as a "necessary evil"--for as long as there is any law, it must be administered and interpreted by persons especially qualified; and the endeavour would be as misplaced, as it would be hopeless, for persons engaged in other affairs, which are sufficient to occupy all their time and attention, to "turn their own lawyers." The study of the law can never be made either so simple or so attractive, as to avoid the necessity of its being a distinct, and somewhat exclusive, profession.
JOB ORTON SMITH
The Lawyer and His Profession
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