Legal Maneuvering Quotes

A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.

A defendant can use discovery to run out the clock on the plaintiff and to make the plaintiff run out of money.

Each lawyer makes somebody unhappy either by beating him, embarrassing him or tying him in knots.

Liberals attempt through judicial activism what they cannot win at the ballot box.

All sides in a trial want to hide at least some of the truth.

Lawyers-a profession it is to disguise matters.

In the Stephen Sondheim song, when something bad happens in the circus, they send in the clowns. In America's political circus, they send in the lawyers.

Prosecutors tend to love conspiracy charges because the rules of evidence are easier, meaning you can get more in to help prove a crime.

They are lawyers, who try to use words — foolishly sometimes — to extricate themselves from mistakes.

Despite the apparent absoluteness of the First Amendment, there are any number of ways of getting around it, ways that are known to any student of law. In general, the strategy is to manipulate the distinction between speech and action which is at bottom a distinction between inconsequential and consequential behavior.

My lord, lawyers are a dangerous species of animals till ha'e any dependence upon--they are always starting punctilios and deeficulties among friends. Why, my dear lord, it is their interest that aw mankind should be at variance; for disagreement is the vary manure wi' which they enrich and fatten the land of leetigation; and as they find that constantly produces the best crop, depend upon it they will always be sure till lay it on ass thick ass they can.

Right" he said "Let's get one thing clear. I am not here to teach you law-I am here to teach you loopholes.

With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.

Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.

The Brer Rabbit ploy has been quite effective for me. When a country is talking about prosecuting me, I demand to be charged and put on trial and offer to pay my own airfare. They know that I'm going to bring a lot of international media with me and put their whaling programme on trial, and they decide it's better to keep quiet and do nothing.

The jury could get the case as early as next week, but the defense says they just want to introduce one last-minute load of crap.

Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits; but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.

Bluster, sputter, question, cavil; but be sure your argument be intricate enough to confound the court.

The reason they were designated as targets was to keep them from the witness stand and us. Is it just a coincidence that four years later they haven't been indicted

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

In this court the parties changed positions as nimbly as if dancing a quadrille.

A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.

Every episode of 'Suits' is great and moves the story forward.

I've taken advantage of the laws. And frankly, so has everybody else in my position.