Legal Advocacy Quotes

Advocacy is in the courtroom—not out in the streets.

A lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society.

When I left the San Francisco DA's office, I went down to the Los Angeles district attorney's office, and I was able to try a tremendous amount - very serious cases and working in gang neighborhoods, impoverished neighborhoods - really make a difference and be impactful in those communities.

The first thing a good lawyer does is immediately presume the guilt of his client.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

In representing criminal defendants—especially guilty ones—it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct.

If you want to amplify the data that you have, you need media, you need lawyers, you need the judiciary. Especially when governments try to shut down a particular website or when litigating on an issue.

Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be - all need at least four years of college.

One of the people that wrote a forward to my book is Gerry Spence, whom I admire. Gerry is a friend of mine, and Gerry's perhaps the leading criminal defense attorney in the country.

My father was a politician. My grandfather was a politician too, maybe it's an innate idea of representing people that we have in our family. I won't go into politics. I think I can provide the voice for the voiceless through law.

I think any time you're able to humanize the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated, then you're doing your job.

I was a crown attorney in my home town in Nova Scotia, and I learned that victims of crime needed better laws to better protect them. I saw politics as a means to improve this protection for them.

Over 17 years, I took on banks, landlords, real estate firms, local governments, anybody who treated anybody unfairly.

Being a lawyer, even in a city as large as Chicago, is like being a citizen of a small town. I love watching the life of the town play out. You know, the rise and fall of individual lives in the entire community is just fascinating to me.

As a social justice lawyer, I started marches against Trump here in Detroit.

My first cousin, by the way, on my father's mother side was John Marshall Harlan, who was a Supreme Court justice, as was his grandson. And I think a lot of my fight and my work to struggle for fairness and the techniques of theater and in subject matter probably stems in some way from some sense I have of his issues in life.

True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures—unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.

Maimonides taught that it is better that 10 criminals go free than let one innocent man be executed. The Innocence Project represents that point of view.

The rest of my life will be devoted to women and litigation

In 1998, I founded the American Center for Law and Justice, probably the premier public interest law firm in America defending the rights of believers.

While the ACLU's supposed principles may shift with the political winds, facts do not. They cannot.

Lawyers are fleas on the hide of human nature.

I will get to the truth, if not in Ukrainian courts, then in international ones. I will fight to my last breath. They want to put me in prison but that won't help. My voice will be heard even louder from prison than now, and the whole world will hear me.

The Attorney General is the state's chief consumer advocate, fighting to protect the financial security of all Illinoisans.

Many veterans in Mississippi struggle with the bureaucratic process of the Veterans Administration.