Floyd Abrams Quotes

I will defend anyone as long as the client gives me total control of the case and pays up front.

My job is all about defending the people that I play.

As a lawyer, particularly in criminal law, you really do have to try to tell your story to the jury and hope that the judge makes rulings that allows your story to get through.

Any litigator will tell you that adding to your legal team on the eve of trial most likely will not produce better lawyering but, rather, chaos.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.

If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputation- unfairly.

My lord, I have some matter of law relating to the indictment, and I desire counsel to speak to it.

Lawyers are predators in grey worsted.

The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.

All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. I know.

You have plaintiffs attorneys, you have defense attorneys. So there is no unified bar that will protect a particular judge who has made a courageous decision that's unpopular.

The ruling in the Paula Jones case is so silly.

I don't think the trial practice is dead. But it is very ill. There are some days you could throw a hand grenade down the hall of the Harris County Courthouse and not hit anybody.

I'm a duty solicitor, so I can't fix someone's life; all I can do is fix the problem I've got in front of my eyes.

I was covering the Supreme Court when it decided Gideon v. Wainright, and the case has always had special meaning for me.

Lawyers don't run sales forces.

As a rule lawyers tend to want to do whatever they can to win.

Since the Puffy Combs case in New York, I will not try any more criminal cases.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

I think he could defend it at a bar association meeting, but not before real people.

By the time our Constitution was written, jury trials in criminal cases had been in existence in England for several centuries and carried impressive credentials traced by many back to Magna Carta.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Lawyers are very important people to me.

In the last analysis, our every right is only worth what our lawyer makes it worth.