215 Quotes About Lawyers

A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour each other if possible.

But [Stanley Wade] instead removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. They were moist not from fear but from the harsh reality of being confronted by one of his victims. How many others were out there? Why had he chosen to spend his career screwing these people?~from "Michael's Room"~

[The clerk] held in front of him a scroll with a red wax seal affixed, the kind of thing believed to make a document official - or at least expensive and difficult to understand, which, in fact, amounts to the same thing.

Ot, schodzi się kilku poważnych — och, jak poważnych! — panów, którzy, wchodząc do sali obrad, starają się pilnie zapomnieć o tym, że są ludźmi, że tam, za oknami gabinetu, huczy i pędzi życie, że to, co oni piszą na papierze, to jest pisane na ludzkiej skórze, że to, co dla nich jest przedmiotem kontrowersji prawniczej, jest dla innych nieraz kwestią życia i śmierci. I pichcą sobie od niechcenia te prawa, a to co oni upichcą, w tym potem męczą się całe pokolenia.

I love the order of deal making, the clarity oof language--how there is little room for interpretation and none for error. I love the black-and-white terms.

Recognize that the legal adversarial system us a flawed way to find the truth.

Recognize that the legal adversarial system is a flawed way to find the truth.

What is true of asset managers is true of lawyers. Willem Buiter, former Chief Economist for Citigroup, puts it aptly: the first third of lawyers produce the immense social value we know as the 'rule of law'. The next third are working on legal disputes that are essentially zero-sum games: each side over-invests in winning the tournament and so they are socially useless....The final third of lawyers are socially predatory: they are employed in the legal scams that fleece the productive.

The law’s a profession of the written word. Do you know what most lawyers want to be? Writers.