LAWYER QUOTES III
quotations about lawyers
Lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?"
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Free Culture
What do you call a lawyer gone bad? Senator.
MARVIN LEBMAN
A Collection of Jokes and Funny Stories
He who will always be his own lawyer will often have a fool for a client.
J. HUNTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? How many can you afford?
BLANCHE KNOTT
Blanch Knott's Treasury of Tastelessness
It is an ill cause that the lawyer thinks shame o'.
JOHN RAY
A Complete Collection of English Proverbs
Jury--Twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
LENORA OLIVER
Herald, 1938
Lawyers are like rabbits. They have a nasty habit of multiplying.
LEO REILLY
How to Outnegotiate Anyone
Lawyers are like unrequited lovers--you give them an inch, and they go for the whole nine yards; you take off one shoe, and they pull down your pants.
ANDRES RUEDA
The Clawback
The Post Office just recalled their newest stamps: They had a picture of lawyers on them ... and people couldn't figure out which side to spit on.
MARVIN LEBMAN
A Collection of Jokes and Funny Stories
There were lawyers who promoted quarrels to get fees. But they were the pariahs of the profession. The best lawyers were peacemakers, and though, of necessity, professional partisans when engaged in litigation, they were generally honorable partisans.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
A countryman between 2 Lawyers, is like a fish between two cats.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1737
A lawyers performance in the courtroom is responsible for about 25 percent of the outcome; the remaining 75 percent depends on the facts.
MELVIN BELLI
attributed, Jar of Quotes
Anyone who believes a better day dawns when lawyers are eliminated has the burden of explaining who will take their place. Who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence, the victims of racial discrimination, and the victims of racial violence?... Lawyers are the simple yet essential means by which people seek to vindicate their rights and we must not foreclose that means.
JOHN CURTIN
remarks at American Bar Association annual meeting, Aug. 13, 1991
As to the essentials of a good lawyer, I have some very definite convictions. He should have a keen sense of right and wrong and a firm belief in basic moral values. I would hate to trust the welfare or protection of the life or property of any of my clients to a lawyer who had no respect for moral values, or one who had a callous indifference as to what was basically right and wrong.
JOSEPH T. KARCHER
New Jersey Lawyer, Nov. 1986
I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby -- not even money, certainly not my soul.
MAHATMA GANDHI
An Autobiography
If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Lawyer even sounds like liar.
WALTER MOSLEY
Walking the Line
Lawyers are a bad lot.... They cheat their living out of honest people.
ALBERT R. CARMAN
Incurable!
Lawyers are ideological enemies of informal justice.
RICHARD L. ABEL
Lawyers in Society
Lawyers are like painters--once they get into a house, you never know when you will get rid of them again.
PETER ANDERSON GRAHAM
The Red Scaur