Quotes About Lawyers

Every year law schools churn out thousands of lawyers. We don't need any more lawyers. We need more lawyers like we need more talk-show hosts.

Over the past few years, the Supreme Court was six times more likely to accept cases from an elite group of 66 lawyers than it was from more than 99 percent of those who petitioned the court. That's the finding of a recent Reuters special report called "The Echo Chamber." It illustrates how almost half the appeals accepted by the court over a nine-year period came from this cadre of elite lawyers--many of whom have personal connections to the nine justices.

Everybody hates lawyers, but they don't realize judges are just lawyers with a promotion. Think about it.

...Her parents were going to a conference for the weekend. The conference was called "Lawyers are Lovely, Great and Superb: so Why Does Everyone Think that They are Liars, Greedy and Scum?" and Mr Thomson was doing a speech called "Ten Tips to Make Lawyers as Popular as Doctors.

America with 4% of the world's population has 50% of the worlds lawyers .... tort lawyers love to point out that 1% of America's health care cost is used to pay malpractice insurance ... but most doctors practice defensive medicine to avoid malpractice litigation ... these costs are not included in the 1% number above.

Some people are saying there's going to be a third World War. I hope not. I really think this is a time that people can start to mend things by negotiations, dealings. We know about dealings, don't we? We have brilliant lawyers. Why don't we have brilliant lawyers standing up and working for peace?

I 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.

In my experience, the public will forgive mistakes, provided they are acknowledged promptly and a remedial course of action is articulated. Lawyers often get in the way of this, which is a subject I cover in my book: how to deal with obstructionist lawyers in a crisis.

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

Lawyers are operators of the toll bridge across which anyone in search of justice has to pass.

Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?

The size of the U.S. middle class has been shrinking. Wages have been stagnant. We don't have those factory jobs that paid a living wage and enabled a family to have a home where the wife did not have to work. But we sent our factories abroad and there is no likelihood of getting them back. Equally worrisome is that some managerial jobs and professional jobs (such as lawyers) which support middle class life are threatened by automation.

The challenge of our generation, whether it's young lawyers, young investment bankers, is to make capitalism work for people not just around the corner, but for people all around the world.

If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers.

People have all these preconceived notions about magicians, like that they're lonely and bitter or they're socially awkward people. I don't know what magician hurt all these people, but I'm constantly having to overcome all these stereotypes. So, no. I'm sure there are just as many magicians who are lonely and bitter as there are comedians, lawyers, or any profession.

Stella: I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away... I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: 'Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father.' And the Judge says, 'Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in Dannemora.'

The charge is prepared; the lawyers are met; The judges all ranged (a terrible show!) I go, undismay'd. For death is a debt, A debt on demand. So take what I owe.

Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair. The emphasis is on before God, or with a conception of God; it is the conception of God that makes sin dialectically, ethically, and religiously what lawyers call 'aggravated' despair.

My parents are both lawyers, and my father always said his best cases have been returns, cases that come into his office from another lawyer. So he said, "Never be ashamed to take a return." All my best roles have happened because someone else dropped out at the last minute, and God bless those actresses for their queeny fits, their sprained ankles, their better job turning up, because that's how I've got my best work.

Jurors want courtroom lawyers to have some compassion and be nice.

Litigation: A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.

Everything bad that has ever happened to me has been caused by agents or lawyers.

In [Philip] Howard's view, our reliance on law, lawyers, and lawsuits has turned Americans into fat, neurotic cowards who 'go through the day looking over their shoulder instead of where they want to go.'

You know that big government doesn't hurt big corporations. They've got the best lawyers and accountants in the world. You know who gets destroyed by big government? It's the little guys.

How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we'd profit from them.

There are all these scripts where the women, if they're working, are prostitutes and lawyers with an angry streak who'll kill you. It's a reaction to women leaving their men and men being angry about it and saying it on some subconscious level

The question arises whether all lawyers are the same. This is like asking whether everything that gets into a sewer is garbage.

"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.

We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.

We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we commercialize art, we cherish success and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. The kids know that if we really valued learning, we would pay our teachers what we pay our lawyers and stockbrokers. If we valued art, we would not measure it by its capacity to produce profits. If we regarded literature as important, we would remove it from the celebrity sweepstakes and spend a little money on our libraries.

I feel for young people today. When I came out of law school, yes, we were broke, we had kids, we had problems. But it was straightforward. I didn't have to say, "My God, I am $80,000 in debt, I have to get a job, I have to pay it back, my life is ruined otherwise." We were able to go forward and work toward building something new, and that's what we did. Today many lawyers are unable to feel free to be advocates.

Constitution is not a mere lawyers document, it is a vehicle of Life, and its spirit is always the spirit of Age.

To the best of my recollection, I became a philosopher because my parents wanted me to become a lawyer. It seems to me, in retrospect, that there was much to be said for their suggestion. On the other hand, many philosophers are quite good company; the arguments they use are generally better than the ones that lawyers use; and we do get to go to as many faculty meetings as we like at no extra charge.

As for lawyers, it's more fun to play one than to be one.

Clarinets, like lawyers, have cases, mouthpieces, and they need a constant supply of hot air in order to function.

You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there, obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there, kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth.

If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?

The company later went broke, and of course all blame was directed at the lawyers. Not once did I hear any talk that maybe a trace of mismanagement could in any way have contributed to the bankruptcy.

Most lawyers who win a case advise their clients, "We have won," and when justice has frowned upon their cause ... "You have lost.

From the law firm's perspective, billing by the hour has a certain appeal: it shifts risk from the firm to the client in case the work takes longer than expected. But from a client's perspective, it doesn't work so well. It gives lawyers an incentive to overstaff and to overresearch cases.

A 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.

My parents lived in a poor rural community on the Eastern Shore, and schools were still segregated. And I remember when lawyers came into our community to open up the public schools to black kids.

When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.

It's not uncommon in the entertainment world for agents to sign young talent. It's sinful that these players can't be represented by lawyers and agents when they're in school. If a player wants to hire someone to seek his value - in any other walk of life, except where this farcical entity that is the NCAA is involved - having a lawyer or agent isn't illegal. It's just the NCAA imposing its own set of rules. It's selfish on their part.

Americans, too many of them, take themselves too seriously. You're going to get rapped - by the viewers, by the sponsors and by the network brass - if you joke about doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, bus drivers, I don't care who. You can't make a joke about Catholics, Negroes, Jews, Italians, politicians, dogs or cats. In fact, politicians, dogs and cats are the most sacred institutions in America.

Our record number of teenagers must become our record number of high school and college graduates and our record number of teachers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and skilled professionals.

Unfortunately, what many people forget is that judges are just lawyers in robes.