B. J. Armstrong Quotes

I couldn't do that as attorney general. Why? Because they are my clients. You can't say they're not doing what they ought to be doing when you are the attorney general.

And if these be unprincipled agents who scruple at nothing, he will be a bold man who will deny that there are always to be found men at the bar who lend their services most cordially to back and support these agents in their most desperate cases.

Every good lawyer knows that if there is something in his client's cause that so personally offends you, morally, religiously, or if it so offends you that you think it would undermine your ability to do your duty as a lawyer, then you shouldn't take it on.

In legal practice, in the representation of clients, I have always felt deeply engaged, serene, and not all inclined to stand aside. I have always done whatever needed to be done, and have usually gotten my way.

I think that the question is very clear-cut, not only as a matter of ethics, but also as a matter of law, that a lawyer should not be aiding and abetting in a fraudulent scheme, and part of that aiding and abetting would be to draw up subsequent documents in order to conceal the true nature of the scheme from federal investigators.

I think an ethical lawyer would absolutely refuse, if he or she had knowledge that this is the purpose for which her work would be used, that is, to conceal a fraudulent scheme from federal regulators.

Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked.

What are you supposed to do - stop practicing law whenever one of your friends becomes president?

… the comfortable fiction that all lawyers are skilled or even competent craftsmen in representing the fundamental rights of their clients.

There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.

For a lawyer to shade or slant his legal advice to advance a private agenda is among the gravest betrayals of his solemn duty as an attorney.

Government lawyers, like private ones, face the problem routinely of aiding in the defense and development of positions in whose correctness they don't believe.

Imagine a legal system in which lawyers were equated with the clients they defended and were condemned for representing controversial or despised clients.

It's the duty of a lawyer to represent anyone for whom a responsible argument could be made.

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.

When you have an attorney giving you advice, it would be nice to know what their financial relationship is to the advice.

There are some lawyers who think of themselves as basically instruments of whoever their clients are, and they pride themselves on their professional craft.

As a result, I've been portrayed as a cynical barbarian preying on the very clients I was charged to defend.

One of the most fundamental questions people have about defense attorneys is, 'How can you do that? How can you go to bat everyday for a person that you may not know is guilty but you have a pretty good idea that he's not so innocent?' It's a question that defense attorneys answer for themselves by not addressing.

A license to practice law is not a license to violate it.

I'm not sure I can say there is a clean line between me as an individual and me as a lawyer.

I no longer teach law. But when I did I advised my students that they should never accept a case if it meant that by doing so you couldn't sleep at night.

New York state ethics rules prohibit lawyers from soliciting gifts from clients 'for the benefit of the lawyer or a person related to the lawyer.'

Certainly, when I was a boy, people liked to believe that lawyers were kind of pillars of goodness of the likes of Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'

For me, I don't participate in the filming when I represent a reality show star in a case, because that would mean waiving my right to attorney-client privilege, and that would hamper my ability to mount an effective case.