quotations about lawyers
Another striking feature of trials at law is the apparent equality of the contest. An unsophisticated observer would suppose that as one side must be right and the other must be wrong, it would clearly and speedily appear which is right and which is wrong. But two skillful lawyers are like two experts at any game of skill or endurance, and the result is that the clearest case becomes at least somewhat doubtful, and the event quite problematical. The arguments on both sides seem irrefragable as they are separately presented. The advocates elude one another's grasp like weasels. They are lubricated all over with the oil of sophistry and rhetoric. It is quite as difficult to put forward a suggestion that is not plausibly answered, as it is to make a run at baseball, or a count at billiards after a skillful player has left the balls in a safe position.
ANONYMOUS
Albany Law Journal, Oct. 1, 1870
The problem with a lawyer with a savior complex is that he is easily disenchanted. Many, if not most, poor clients involved in our legal system are "guilty" in the eyes of the law.... A few months--heck, a few weeks--spent defending the rights of guilty clients against police and prosecutorial overreach would be enough to shatter the dreams of many a young lawyer anxious to defend the innocent.
KATIE ROSE
"American lawyers have an Atticus Finch complex, and it's killing the profession", Quartz, March 31, 2016
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
Lawyers are perceived by some to matriculate in a realm, if not of their own making, then at least of their own maintenance, in which the secrets of power over the political and legal machinery are reserved, protected, and ultimately manipulated for their own advantage and to the detriment and divestment of others.
WALTER BENNETT
The Lawyer's Myth
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
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
It is a matter of intense debate whether lawyers will find themselves facing the same kind of technological unemployment that has caused elevator operators to all but disappear. That, however, is not the analogy that interests me. I am not sure what the future holds. But in the present, too many lawyers share much of the helplessness, frustration and unnecessary labor of the passengers who take the stairs for want of operators to hit the elevator buttons for them. The truth is that even if we could press pause on technological progress, the legal community would still have considerable work to do to integrate existing process and technology improvements into the delivery of legal services.
D. CASEY FLAHERTY
"When will lawyers rise (like elevators) to the occasion?", ABA Journal, March 17, 2016
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
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
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"
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
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"
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
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
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
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"
There is never a deed so foul that something couldn't be said for the guy; that's why there are lawyers.
MELVIN BELLI
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 18, 1981
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
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
There is a certain class of men, in short, we know by the name of lawyers, whom we find swarming in every hole and corner of society.... Their business is with statutes, dictates, decisions, and authority. They go on emptying volume after volume, of all their heterogeneous contents, till they become so laden with other men's thoughts, as scarce to have any of their own. Seldom do their sad eyes look beyond the musty walls of authority, in which their souls are all perpetually immured. And now, as soon as their minds have come to be duly instructed, first, in the antique sophistries, substantial fictions, wise absurdities, and profound dogmas of buried sages, and then fairly liberalized by all the light of modern innovation, and of precious salutary change, do we see them step forward into the world full blown with the most triumphal pretensions, to deal out blessings to mankind. Now, indeed, they are ready to execute a prescription of either justice or injustice--to lend themselves to any side--to advocate any doctrine, for they are well provided with the means in venerable print. Eager for employment, they pry into the business of men, with snakish smoothness slip into the secrets of their affairs, discern the ingredients of litigation, and blow them up into strife. This is, indeed, but laboring in their vocation. For an honest lawyer, if, in strictness, there be such a phenomenon on earth, is an appearance entirely out of the common course of nature--a violent exception, and must therefore be esteemed a sort of prodigy. Abject slaves themselves, these counterfeits of men are now to be the proud dictators of human destiny, and withal the glittering favorites of fortune.
P. W. GRAYSON
Vice Unmasked