Legal Writing Quotes

My father was a lawyer. I was fascinated to become a lawyer, too.

I am a lawyer by profession.

After the American Revolution Alexander Hamilton wanted to study law, but there were no law books. So Hamilton wrote them.

The U.S. is blessed with tremendously creative and imaginative law students at places like Chicago, Harvard, Columbia and Yale.

I went to law school.

I want to study law.

Antonin Scalia was witty, warm, funny, and full of life. He was not only one of the most important justices in the nation's history; he was also among the greatest.

Even after working at 'MarketWatch' and loving journalism and loving business news, I still wanted to be a lawyer because it was my plan.

Everytime a lawyer writes something, he is not writing for posterity, he is writing something so that endless others of his craft can make a living out of trying to figure out what he said. Course perhaps he really haden't said anything, that's what makes it so hard to explain.

Long-term I would love to go to law school.

Law Number IX: Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound ... Q.E.D.

When the Supreme Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.

I don't just write letters. I write laws.

The practice of the law is a perfectly distinct art.

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

At some point in their life, everyone thinks they should go to law school. You may in fact think you want to go to law school now.

Supreme court opinions should be written in such a way that they can be read in the barber shop.

When I was in law school I was taught that the great writers were people like [Oliver Wendell] Holmes Jr. and [Benjamin N.] Cardozo. But you go back and read their prose and it's sort of perfumed and very ornate and show-offy. And they're constantly striving for these abstractions that seem archaic nowadays.

The minute you read something and you can't understand it, you can be sure it was written by a lawyer. Then, if you give it to another lawyer to read and he don't know just what it means, then you can be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer. If it's in a few words and is plain, and understandable only one way, it was written by a non-lawyer.

Until now, until I actually got into law class, I just never thought of it as being an interest for me, but it's really funny because now that I'm in law, I'm like 'Wow, I could be a lawyer.

My job is to write opinions. I decide cases and write opinions. It is not to respond to idiocy and critics who make statements that are unfounded. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't have constructive criticisms, but it should be constructive.

Everybody, I think, who hopes to become a judge would aspire to be able to write as well as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. None are going to be able to attain that.

A lot of people probably don't realize how difficult it is to stick to that lawyer speak when you're not a lawyer. I see everyone on 'The Good Wife' - everyone, people who have been there since day one - struggling with that language because it is just not how people talk.

I was a journalism major in college, went to law school, and became a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. I loved it and was with the Department of Justice for years.

I'm not an angry person. When I write, the lawyer in me tries to make it as easy to read as possible.