lawyers

The law works in mysterious ways

The last word smelled of desperation,and the old lawyer sighed. 'I can tell you that the law is an ocean of darkness and truth, and that lawyers are but vessels on the surface. We may pull one rope or another, but it is the client, in the end, who charts the course.

It's kind of funny to me listening to people who claim to have these great records of winning a hundred and some odd straight felony cases without a loss and that kind of stuff that you hear of all the time. I'm here to tell you, if you let me pick out which hundred cases I get to try, I'll win a hundred of them in a row, too. Case selection is everything in creating records like that. My philosophy was, I tried them all. If I made a determination that the evidence was sufficient to justify the prosecution, then I would try the case, and certainly whenever you do that, you're going to lose a certain percentage of them.

The apparent facts, if you like. I'm not a philosopher. We lawyers don't deal in ultimate realities. Who knows what they are? We deal in appearances.

All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will prevail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

We lawyers do not write plain English. We use eight words to say what could be said in two. We use arcane phrases to express commonplace ideas. Seeking to be precise, we become redundant. Seeking to be cautious, we become verbose. Our sentences twist on, phrase within clause within clause, glazing the eyes and numbing the minds of our readers. The result is a writing style that has, according to one critic, four outstanding characteristics. It is (1) wordy, (2) unclear, (3) pompous, and (4) dull.

The law is not an ass but a chameleon in ass skin: it turns deathly black when around blacks and pristine white when around whites

The ego is a palpable body part in an attorney, perhaps the most prominent body part.

He had a toughness about him, and his five grand Savile Row suit did little to hide the fact that he worked out regularly. He looked like someone who could've gone either way, the mob or something legitimate, and somehow ended up in the middle as a lawyer.

I'm amazed at how [police officers] don't want to come to court. They want to make the case and they want it to get prosecuted, but they don't want to come testify. Sorry, but the ultimate way of writing your report is telling it to a jury. When I was a defense lawyer, I used to think all police officers were liars, but now I find that there are only a few. Most of them are pretty straightforward and do a good job. But there are some, and if I know that they are liars or I know they tend to exaggerate, I try to take that into consideration when I'm dealing with their cases.

The Supreme Court of the United States is no longer a court of law. It is a forum of legal fad and fashion.

Some people had attack dogs. Ghastek had attack lawyers.

Fangs are more pointed, and vampires use fangs to bite people on the neck.''Yech! Who'd want to do that?''Vampires would, that's who.''Wait a minute. I saw Mrs. Monroe bite Mr. Monroe on the neck once. Does that mean she's a vampire?''Boy, are you dumb. She's not a vampire. She's a lawyer.

People who do not eat butterflies will wear their clothes the wrong way, and people who wear their clothes the wrong way are inviting lemmings inside." -- Muzhduk the Ugli the Third

Like all lawyers, I was delighted by gratitude. It happened so rarely.

Then Mr. Underwood's meaning became clear: Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case.

Any attorney with a conscience always speaks the truth. An attorney can and should practice law in a scrupulous manner, but some dishonest attorneys disregard ethical mandates in order to win. Unethical attorneys shape their clients stories, which is a fancy way of assisting them tell a fib.