A Quote by Charlie Munger

The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients.
Imagine a legal system in which lawyers were equated with the clients they defended and were condemned for representing controversial or despised clients.
Virtually all big law firms have good to super-good lawyers. All big law firms don't have great litigators.
From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort.
You'll better understand the evil when top audit firms started selling fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top-20 clients, so no-one would notice.
You have various institutions like law firms and accounting firms which bill by the hour. I'm really against that. You have an incentive to go slowly, be there as long as possible, to over-research things and over-staff.
Later in that administration, I was asked to take a job which I had to turn down as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs because we were just then putting together the merger of two small law firms that became this law firm. I couldn't leave them at that point.
There is evidence that young men in the big law firms, although they still work harder than most of their clients, do not glory in putting in night work and weekend hours as they once did.
Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.
If two firms join together, we want their total tax bill to go up because we don't want more big firms. We'd actually like to have lots more small ones.
As a lawyer, I can assure you that a lot of document drafting is repetitive, involving cutting and pasting from templates. But the best lawyers bring a unique perspective to the process and anticipate clients' problems.
I see basically two models of law firms in the world. One of the global law firm they go by the name of one-stop shops, which will open an office, everybody see and opportunity and will also practice the local law of that jurisdiction. That's a successful model as well but that's not the only model. And the other model is those of independent law firms, national champions which have some unique strengths as well and I think both have their strengths and weaknesses.
I played a lawyer once, and I had about three or four weeks before we shot, so I was able to go to court and watch lawyers at work. Some were good lawyers and some were bad lawyers, but it was essential. The more time you have to prepare, the better. Always.
My clients were always poor folks, working folks, people who were in trouble and couldn't afford to pay a whole lot. I found it very difficult to say no to somebody who needed help, so most of my work turned out to be pro bono. It didn't start out that way, but it turned out that way because I never got paid.
I thought I would spend the rest of my life being a good tax lawyer. The interesting thing about being a tax lawyer is, none of your clients are poor. I had clients come to me and say, 'Can you help us make investments?' That led to me getting into the real estate business.
Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly paid human lawyers.
Lawyers claim that their clients have been grossly mistreated, which is what criminal defense lawyers are paid to do.
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