A Quote by Henry David Thoreau
I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.
Related Quotes
By not trying the small cases, the lawyers don't get the courtroom experience. So when the huge, bet-the-company cases come along, there are only a handful of trial lawyers who can handle it. That's why these big corporations still call us old-timers every day.
I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.
The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.
Most lawyers only tell you about the cases they win. I can tell you about some I lose. A lawyer who wins all his cases does not have many.
I practiced law for 10 years, and I always admired the lawyers who were not afraid to take unpopular cases. And I never had the guts to do that. I was playing it safe. I was trying to make a living. And I just never volunteered for a really tough case, and there were some of them I should've taken. And I admired the lawyers who did.
The 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.
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.
The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans, and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone.
Were I confirmed as a judge, I would decide cases according to the rule of law beginning to end.
The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.
It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us -- our governments, our business, our private lives. Most legislators are lawyers; they make our laws. Most presidents, governors, commissioners, along with their advisers and brain-trusters are lawyers; they administer our laws. All the judges are lawyers; they interpret and enforce our laws. There is no separation of powers where the lawyers are concerned. There is only a concentration of all government power -- in the lawyers.
I represented a man on death row whose lawyers had spent all of eight hours looking into his claim of innocence. I met men whose lawyers had never looked into their backgrounds.
I 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.
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.
While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland.
I hate second-guessing other lawyers because I know that I've tried and lost cases, and somebody could sit there and say, 'Should have done it this way,' and they'd have been right.
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