Lawyer Client Quotes & Sayings

A lawyer is sometimes required to search titles, and the client who thinks he has good right to an estate, puts the papers in his hands, and the attorney goes into the public records and finds everything right for three or four years back; but after a time he comes to a break in the title. So he finds that the man who supposed he owned it owns not an acre of the ground which belongs to someone else. I trace the title of this world from century to century until I find the whole right vested in God. Now to whom did he give it? To his own children. All are yours. — Thomas De Witt Talmage

Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Somehow it must be made plain that the lawyer's moral judgment is not for hire, that there are occasions when the lawyer ... is under a duty to act as a person of independent ethical concern with obligations not only to his client's interests but also to fairness and justice in the management of affairs. — Harry Jones

He recalled what Phillip Pryce had said about hatred forming the undercurrent to the legal proceedings, and thought there had to be a way to turn that rage around. He thought the best lawyer finds a way to harness whatever external force is directed at his client and take advantage of it. — John Katzenbach

Any attorney with a conscience always speaks the truth. An attorney can and should practice law in a scrupulous manner, but some dishonest attorneys disregard ethical mandates in order to win. Unethical attorneys shape their clients stories, which is a fancy way of assisting them tell a fib. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Have you ever noticed that the lawyer always smiles more than the client? — George Carlin

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. — Samuel Johnson

A lawyer once told a jury that the person his client stood accused of having killed was about to walk through the courtroom door. When the jurors looked startled, the lawyer asserted that if those jurors had wondered, even for one second that the victim might appear, that belief constituted enough reasonable doubt for them to find his client innocent. — John Adams

I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process. — Gerry Spence

DeBlass's eyes darted left and right. His breathing grew hard and fast.
"My client does not acknowledge ownership of the weapon in question."
"Your client's scum."
The lawyer puffed up. "Lieutenant Dallas, you're speaking of a United States Senator."
"That makes him elected scum. — J.D. Robb

[you'll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client's principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize you were nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay your outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It's supposed to be an honorable profession, but you'll meet so many crooked lawyers you'll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah Mitch, you'll get cynical. And it's sad, really. — John Grisham

Unlike other relationships that have a purpose beyond themselves and are clearly delineated as such (dentist-patient, lawyer-client, teacher-student), the writer-subject relationship seems to depend for its life on a kind of fuzziness and murkiness, if not utter covertness, of purpose. If everybody put his cards on the table, the game would be over. The journalist must do his work in a kind of deliberately induced state of moral anarchy. — Janet Malcolm

Every lawyer shall tell his or her client that becoming involved with the legal system is like three years of experimental chemotherapy, one hundred percent guaranteed not to work. — Lawrence Joseph

If you are unfortunate enough to be involved in legal action, you've got to realize that it's a three-way fight: There's you, there's your opponent, and there's your lawyer. And your lawyer is not on your side. His job is to get as much money as possible out of you, frequently in collusion with the other side's lawyer, and then move on to another client. — Peter Brimelow

Some caricatures suggest that a conservative would be reluctant to represent a convicted murderer. That may be true, if the client is clearly guilty. Although every defendant deserves a lawyer, I've handled too many horrible criminal cases to have any interest in representing violent criminals. But John Thompson was innocent. And critical to supporting the death penalty is ensuring that we vigorously protect the innocent. DNA has enabled many guilty persons to be convicted, and it has proven the innocence of many others. — Ted Cruz

My client," the lawyer said forcefully, "is pleading the Fifth. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."
Levin nodded thoughtfully.
"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either. — Michael Connelly

I do not expect I shall ever again have the opportunity of defending and murdering a client in the same day. - Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter — Seth Grahame-Smith

I am motivated by thoughts of my sorrowful little client and the screwing that he got. I'm the only lawyer Donny Ray has, and it will take much more than paper to slow me down. — John Grisham

For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice. — Vincent Bugliosi

The last word smelled of desperation,and the old lawyer sighed. 'I can tell you that the law is an ocean of darkness and truth, and that lawyers are but vessels on the surface. We may pull one rope or another, but it is the client, in the end, who charts the course. — John Hart

Some of our clients have not been saints, but no lawyer can dictate morals to his client. — John Grisham

If there is any truth to the old proverb that "one who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client," the Court now bestows a constitutional right on one to make a fool of himself. — Harry A. Blackmun

The man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. — Joseph Hansen

The fundamental tension of the profession is the struggle between bold advocacy of the client's interests and the need to establish and hold to limits that prevent advocacy from leading to irrational and inequitable results; and thus the lawyer's job in practice is to be on one hand the impassioned representative of his client to the world, and on the other the wise representative to his client of the legal system, and the society, explaining and upholding the demands and restrictions which that system places on them both. — Scott Turow

Mr. Walsh?" a woman's voice said. "Can I get a comment, Mr. Walsh?"
"That's not about me, is it?" I said.
"No, my client. He's on trial for killing his business partner and dissolving him in quicklime. Which is ridiculous."
"Uh-huh."
"It is. Anyone in my client's line of work knows that quicklime is a very poor solvent. Chemical hydrolysis is the method of choice these days. — Kelley Armstrong

5:3 Do Not Wither within Your Area of Expertise
...
But the lawyer must not allow the client to make a decision that the lawyer believes is wrong without a forceful and effective presentation by the lawyer of his or her position on the subject. When the matter is within the sphere of the lawyer's expertise, the lawyer must not permit the fear of being wrong to devour the lawyer's obligation to urge a course of action which the lawyer believes to be the best. (p.58) — Peter Siviglia

The great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly emunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in the country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy. — Theodore Roosevelt

A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom? — Ron Suskind

I remember when I was twenty-five," he said. "No client comes to you when you're twenty-five. It's like when you are looking for a doctor. You don't want the new one that just graduated. You don't want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys. — Daniel Amory

Lincoln found himself in a stifling courtroom one hot summer day, pleading his client's case. The opposing lawyer, in a concession to the oppressive heat, took off his coat and vest as the debate went on. The man's shirt had its buttons in the back, a style which was unusual even then. Lincoln looked at his opponent and sized up the man's apparel. Knowing that the rural jury disliked pretension of any kind, or any attempt to show superior social rank, he said: "Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think you will be at all influenced by the gentleman's pretended knowledge of the law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front." The jury burst into laughter, and Lincoln won the case. — Rriiver Nyile

In all death penalty cases, spending time with clients is important. Developing the trust of clients is not only necessary to manage the complexities of the litigation & deal with the stress of a potential execution; it's also key to effective advocacy. A client's life often depends on his lawyer's ability to create a mitigation narrative that contextualizes his poor decisions or violent behavior. Uncovering things about someone's background that no one has previously discovered--things that might be hard to discuss but are critically important--requires trust. Getting someone to acknowledge he has been the victim of child sexual abuse, neglect, or abandonment won't happen without the kind of comfort that takes hours and multiple visits to develop. Talking about sports, TV, popular culture, or anything else the client wants to discuss is absolutely appropriate to building a relationship that makes effective work possible. — Bryan Stevenson

No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client. — Anthony Trollope

I never saw anything like it. He was like the bit in the movie where Tom Cruise is a lawyer and he's decided he's really going to win this case, for the sake of justice and the American way, and that? And it's suddenly like bang-bang-bang - grabbing files off shelves and slamming them down on the desk and punching numbers in the telephone and shaking out the phone cord dramatically , and you know, snapping out instructions to all the assistants around the desk, like: "Get me all the phone records of the President of the United States for the last fifty years," and "Get me the names of every client who ever ate a banana," and "Let's get some Chinese take-out up here, on the double! — Jaclyn Moriarty

Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said: "Take the witness." The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when his own counsel said: "I have no questions to ask him." The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse. Counsel for the prosecution said: "Take the witness." "I have no questions to ask him," Potter's lawyer replied. A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's possession. "Take the witness." Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his client's life without an effort? — Mark Twain

A good lawyer is part con man, part priest
promising riches, threatening hell. My ethical rules are simple. I won't lie to the court or let a client do it. But I've never been in this position. How far would I go for a woman who mattered? Is there anything I wouldn't do to win? — Paul Levine

If I was a lawyer, I'd be my own best client. — Robert Downey Jr.

I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!") Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client. — Abraham Lincoln

After that I met that lawyer in the street, and was ashamed to look him in the face. I'm blessed if he didn't come up and shake hands with me, and tell me that he knew all along that his client hadn't a leg to stand on. Now I call that beautiful." "Beautiful!" said Kenneby. "Yes, I do. He fought that battle just as if he was sure of winning, though he knew he was going to lose. Give me the man that can fight a losing battle. Anybody can play whist with four by honours in his own hands. — Anthony Trollope

Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell. — William S. Burroughs

I think that one of the primary roles of an attorney, and certainly we try to teach it here to our students, is that you counsel compliance with the law. The lawyer, more than simply being a mouthpiece for the client and advocating at whatever cost the client's interest, is also an officer of the court in questions that appear before the court. — Viet D. Dinh

There must be some point, at which the lawyer's own personal and social morality will rebel against his traditional allegiance to his client. — Harry Jones

Well, I guess most people would only know me from The O.C. I did a few episodes of Gilmore Girls before that. I was also a client on a lot of lawyer shows. — Adam Brody