Patricia Millett Quotes

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

Lawyers advocate more so than state their own positions.

Any good trial lawyer knows that if you've got one credible expert or scientific study, then you can let the jury decide.

The good lawyer is the great salesman.

It's fine to get paid and get a big verdict, but to go out and represent people, sometimes in unglamorous ways, is really what lawyering is all about.

Your job as a trial attorney is to try to convey to the jury the essence of the people you represent.

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 was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him - it's the American way.

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

I have a pretty good record of winning in court.

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.

It's great fun if you get a good piece of writing and you can pretend to be someone else, tell a story that needs to be told, make some kind of connection. I've always fancied myself as a leading man, but I really doubt whether anyone else sees me that way.

A good lawyer knows how to shut up when he's won his case.

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

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.

The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.

The role of the defense is to be an advocate for their client, regardless of whether he did it or not, within the bounds of the law.

Knowing the law is not much help for an advocate. In fact, it's a bit of a disadvantage, cramps your style.

It is interesting that I have gone through the process of representing clients as an ex-athlete. I am certainly not naive to think that the possibility of corruption isn't there.

Good lawyers win so-so lawsuits. Great lawyers can win lawsuits in which you have little or no chance to win.

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.

Good lawyering is usually cerebral and impersonally. You can convince a judge with a mastery of facts, detail, and precedent - not a story from the gut about how you feel a certain way.

The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.

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.

Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you...take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.