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The ethical practices of lawyers are probably no worse than those of other professions. Lawyers bring some of the trouble on by claiming in a sanctimonious way that they are interested only in justice, not power or wealth. They also suffer guilt by association. Their clients are often people in trouble. Saints need no lawyers: gangsters do.
Lawrence M. FriedmanThe Lawyers' trade is a trade built entirely on words. And so long as the lawyers carefully keep to themselves the key to what those words mean, the only way the average man can find out what is going on is to become a lawyer, or at least to study law, himself. All of which makes it very nice -- and very secure -- for the lawyers.
Fred RodellWith Congress and the S.E.C. so heavily peopled by lawyers, and with lawyers having been so heavily involved in drafting financial disclosure documents now seen as bogus, there was a new "lawyer" joke every week. One such was: "The butcher says 'the reputation of lawyers has fallen dramatically', and the check-out clerk replies: "How do you fall dramatically off a pancake?
Charlie MungerAmerican government is not dominated by engineers, it is dominated by lawyers. Engineers are interested in substance and building things; lawyers are interested in process and rights and getting the ideology correctly blended. And so there is sort of no really concrete plan for the future.
Peter ThielI think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it; also realizing it. Most lawyers are very successful, and they think that because they're making money and people think well of them, they must be doing everything right.
Alan DershowitzCriminal court is where bad people are on their best behavior. It's much more dangerous for lawyers and judges in family court, where good people are at their worst.
Richard DoolingLawyers know how to take isolated complaints in a divorce case and build them into one big one.
Hedy LamarrI got ex's all across the country and I owe everybody in town. I got bill collectors a callin' me up, and lawyers trying to track me down.
George StraitSo the Clinton-Gore era culminates with an election as stained as the blue dress, a Democratic chorus complaining that the Constitution should not be the controlling legal authority, and Clinton's understudy dispatching lawyers to litigate this: It depends on what the meaning of 'vote' is.
George WillThe real reason that we canโt have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post โThou shalt not steal,โ โThou shalt not commit adultery,โ and โThou shalt not lieโ in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.
George CarlinAfter kids leave the house, they can decide to do whatever they want, but while they're under my roof, they're going to be lawyers or writers or something, something important, anything except actors.
John LeguizamoSome liberal interest groups have come out in full force and have attempted to paint Judge [Samuel] Alito to be an extremist and to be an activist. They've criticized a nominee who has, from what I see described by these lawyers and fellow judges, a reputation of being a restrained jurist committed to the rule of law and the Constitution.
Chuck GrassleyThe amazing fact that one person can make his own film - I think animation is somewhat unique in that respect. I don't need to deal with lawyers. I don't need to deal with corporations. I don't need to deal with executives or agents or any of that. I can just sit at home and make a feature film. That's a wonderful experience. Each film I make gets more popular, more press and makes more money. So it's amazing that I've survived and actually prospered doing that sort of homegrown, cottage-industry filmmaking.
Bill PlymptonNobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.
John GrishamI believe, assume the power to decide more political than legal issues in nature, the people naturally focus less on the law and more on the lawyers that are chosen really to administer the law.
Sam BrownbackLitigation: A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.
Kin HubbardI love lawyers and bankers, they are my family, but I don't want to live with them. It doesn't make a city. You need people with brain and heart and soul that give it all. You need young people on skateboards and you need people running around making noise.
Agathe SnowDoes America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million lawsuits coursing through our system annually?
Dan QuayleI've talked to a lot of pretty good lawyers around the world. I'm non-extraditable. That's the real reason the US government was pissed off, even when I was initially in Hong Kong.
Edward SnowdenTo its committed members (the Democratic Party) was still the party of heart, humanity, and justice, but to those removed a few paces it looked like Captain Hookโs crewโambulance-chasing lawyers, rapacious public policy grants persons, civil rights gamesmen, ditzy-brained movie stars, fat-assed civil servant desk squatters, recovering alcoholics, recovering wife-beaters, recovering child-buggers, and so forth and so on, a grotesque line-up of ill-mannered self-pitying, caterwauling freeloaders banging their tin cups on the pavement demanding handouts.
Nicholas von HoffmanProsperity: that condition which attracts the lively interest of lawyers, and warrants your being sued for damages, or indicted, or both.
Elbert HubbardSince lawyers are thinkers and not feelers, and their moral development is locked into the rigidity of maintaining law and order, they often come across as impersonal, insensitive, amoral, and not particularly human to the clients they serve.
Thane RosenbaumFor educated Americans like Joseph Ellis, Vietnam is a special hang-up. I am an Englishman of exactly the Vietnam generation, a couple of years younger than Ellis; indeed, for reasons too complicated to explain here, I was nearly drafted into the US army in 1965. I know many Americans of my own age and, as much to the point, my own class - journalists, publishers, lawyers. And I don't think I know one who served in Vietnam.
Geoffrey WheatcroftThe fact that I am constantly immersed in the act of legal writing and editing has made me a better and more efficient creative writer and editor. In the end, lawyers need to tell compelling stories when they write a brief or other legal argument. A successful lawyer understands that the judge is merely a person who is going to read that brief, which should articulate a compelling reason for the judge to rule in that lawyer's favor. In other words, a legal advocate needs to get the judge to care. That's not dissimilar to what a creative writer does.
Daniel OlivasIn the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.
George OrwellAnd he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.
Luke the EvangelistCivilizations are not remembered by their business people, their bankers or lawyers. They're remembered by the arts.
Eli BroadI'd be bored to death if I spent all my time with other businesspeople, bankers and lawyers.
Eli BroadCertainly Tunisia was the first in Muslim world. It's been like that for a long time and women play an important part in Tunisia. There are women in all professions. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, journalists and so on.
Bernard LewisIf there is a regulation that says you have to do something-whether it be putting in seat belts, catalytic converters, clean air for coal plants, clean water-the first tack that the lawyers use, among others things, and that companies use, is that it's going to drive the electricity bill up, drive the cost of cars up, drive everything up. It repeatedly has been demonstrated that once the engineers start thinking about it, it's actually far less than the original estimates. We should remember that when we hear this again, because you will hear it again.
Steven ChuI think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it - also realizing it.
Alan DershowitzI met with my lawyers. They gave me all the wrong advice. For a long time I refused to accept the child was mine. I should have met her, arranged a DNA test and accepted my responsibility.
Boris BeckerI noticed one thing. According to the ABA statistics, only 3.5 percent of lawyers in America in 2000 were Hispanic, yet they - Hispanics make up 5 percent of the federal district court judges and 6 percent of circuit court judges.
Jeff SessionsThe story I always recite - and have had to recite so many times over the years to different lawyers and different people within Universal - is that the business end of Mo'Wax was basically, like, 'Give us the big ones samples first, and we'll see how we get on.' And I gave them the six or seven that were, to me, the ones that were the scariest, and the biggest use. It wasn't about the big names, necessarily - although that played into it a bit, with people like Bjork and Metallica.
DJ ShadowKerr's Three Rules for a Successful College: Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students, and parking for the faculty. If law school is so hard to get through, how come there are so many lawyers?
Calvin TrillinA reckoning is coming on the state of the internet journalism, because right now, the way it's set up, there is so much room for libel to squeak through that you're going to see...they're going to rewrite the rule book on journalism very soon. They have to, because the bloggers are getting away with so much rumor-mongering about public officials and even private figures because they don't have editors and they don't have fact checkers and they don't have lawyers. There is going to be a price to pay somewhere down the line.
Rod LurieThe last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind-computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands.The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind-creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.These people-artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers-will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys.
Daniel H. Pink