James Fuqua's Law Jokes

Famous Quotes and Sayings About Lawyers

Attributed

I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress.

-- John Adams, in the play "1776"

Lawyers are just like physicians: what one says, the other contradicts.

-- Sholom Aleichem

LAWYER: A professional advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics.

-- The Cynic's Dictionary; http://www.amz.com/cynic; published by William Morrow, © Rick Bayan.

There is never a deed so foul that something couldn't be said for the guy; that's why there are lawyers.

-- Melvin Belli

Imagine the appeals, dissents and remandments, if lawyers had written 'The Ten Commandments'.

-- Harry Bender

"Lawyers Are": The only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

-- Jeremy Bentham

But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Lawyers Are": One skilled in the circumvention of the law.

-- Ambrose Bierce

"Lawyers Are": A learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it himself.

-- Henry Brougham

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

--Lenny Bruce

"Lawyers Are": One who defends you at the risk of your pocketbook, reputation and life.

-- Eugene E. Brussell

He saw a lawyer killing a viper on a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother Abel.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Lawyers Are": A chimney-sweeper who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.

"Lawyers Are": The only civil delinquents whose judges must of necessity be chosen from (amongst) themselves.

-- Charles Caleb Colton

All in all I'd rather have been a judge than a miner. And what's more, being a miner, as soon as you are too old and tired and sick and stupid to do the job properly, you have to go. Well, the very opposite applies with judges. ^*

--Peter Cook

"Lawyers Are": By law's dark by-ways he has stored his mind with wicked knowledge on how to cheat mankind.

-- George Crabbe

The Denver Post may have been on to more than it realized when it reported, "... the former Deputy Attorney General said the bar has never been so successful in serving the poor."

A lawyer and a physician had a dispute over precedence. They referred it to Diogenes who gave it in favor of the lawyer as follows:

"Let the thief go first, and the executioner follow."

Diogenes went to look for an honest lawyer. "How's it going?" someone asked. "Not too bad," answered Diogenes. "I still have my lantern."

Lorenzo Dow, an evangelist of the last century, was on a preaching tour when he came to a small town one cold winter's night. He entered the local general store to get some warmth, and saw the town's lawyers gathered around the pot-bellied stove discussing the town's business. Not one offered to allow Dow into the circle.

Dow told the men who he was, and that he had recently had a vision where he had been given a tour of Hell, much like the traveler in Dante's Inferno. When one of the lawyers asked him what he had seen, he replied, "Very much what I see here: all of the lawyers, gathered in the hottest place."

"My daddy is a movie actor, and sometimes he plays the good guy, and sometimes he plays the lawyer."

-- Malcolm Ford, to his preschool classmates on what his father, actor Harrison Ford, does for a living.

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

-- Benjamin Franklin.

There's no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.

"Lawyers Are": Those who lie, conceal and distort everything and slander everybody.

-- Jean Giraudoux

From "Book Of Anecdotes", a story told of former President and General, U.S. Grant:

Undistinguished and often shabby in appearance, Ulysses S. Grant did not recommend himself to strangers by looks. He once entered an inn at Galena, Illinois, on a stormy winter's night. A number of lawyers, in town for a court session, were clustered around the fire. One looked up as Grant appeared and said, "Here's a stranger, gentlemen, and by the looks of him he's travelled through hell itself to get here."

"That's right," said Grant cheerfully.

"And how did you find things down there?"

"Just like here," replied Grant, "lawyers all closest to the fire."

The other day my house caught fire. My lawyer said, "Shouldn't be a problem. What kind of coverage do you have?" I said, "Fire and theft." The lawyer frowned. "Uh oh. Wrong kind. Should be fire OR theft."

-- Alan King on an Ed Sullivan retrospective

Where there is a rift in the lute, the business of the lawyer is to widen the rift and gather the loot.

-- Arthur G. Hays

What's the use of that, Wendell, a lawyer can't be a great man!

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., on his son's plans to attend law school

"Lawyers Are": Those who earn a living by the sweat of their brow-beating.

-- James G. Huneker

It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.

-- Thomas Jefferson

There are more lawyers just in Washington, D.C. than in all of Japan.

They've got about as many lawyers as we have sumo-wrestlers.

-- Lee Iacocca, on the lack of litigation among Japanese businesses

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."

-- Franz Kafka

The trial lawyer does what Socrates was executed for: making the worse argument appear the stronger.

-- Judge Irving Kaufman

I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

-- John Keats

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.

-- Charles Lamb

I'll never discuss my lawyer's character in his absence, so let's discuss his absence of character!

-- Michael Lara

"Lawyers Are": Those who use the law as shoemakers use leather; rubbing it, pressing it, and stretching it with their teeth, all to the end of making it fit their purposes.

-- Louis XII

Lawyers are the only profession where the more there are, the more are needed!

-- Robert Lucky, IEEE Spectrum

Lawyers are like rhinoceroses: thick skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge.

-- David Mellor, British Conservative politician.

"Lawyers Are": One who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.

-- Henry Louis Mencken

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.

-- H.L. Mencken

"Lawyers Are": People whose profession it is to disguise matters.

-- Thomas More

I don't want a Lawyer to tell me what I cannot do; I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.

-- J.P. Morgan

Lawyers are like beavers: They get in the mainstream and damn it up.

-- John Naisbitt, in Megatrends

A lawyer is a man who helps you get what is coming to him.

-- Laurence J. Peter

Litigation is the basic legal right which guarantees every corporation its decade in court.

-- David Porter

I told you all lawyers are worthless. After all it takes won (sic) to know one.

-- Former V-P Dan Quayle

I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislature. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what makes him a lawyer.

-- Will Rogers

A man who never graduated from school might steal from a freight car. But a man who attends college and graduates as a lawyer might steal the whole railroad.

-- President Theodore Roosevelt, attempting to persuade his son to become a lawyer

To me, a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We're all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there is a problem the lawyer is the only person who has read the inside of the top of the box.

-- Jerry Seinfeld

"Lawyers Are": Perilous mouths.

-- William Shakespeare

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

--William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2

It is better to be a mouse in a cat's mouth than a man in a lawyer's hands.

Spanish Proverb

The ideal client is the very wealthy man in very great trouble.

-- John Sterling

"Lawyers Are": Those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding the law.

-- Jonathan Swift.

As your attorney, it is my duty to inform you that it is not important that you understand what I'm doing or why you're paying me so much money. What's important is that you continue to do so.

-- Hunter S. Thompson's Samoan Attorney

Mark Twain was at a dinner party where he gave one of his customary after-dinner speeches. When he had finished a prominent lawyer stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets and said, "Doesn't it strike this company as unusual that a professional humorist should be so funny?"

Mark Twain came back with, "Doesn't it strike this company as unusual that a lawyer should have both hands in his own pockets?"

They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are gettin' ready to prove that a man's heirs ain't got any right to his property.

-- Mark Twain

Of course I've got lawyers. They are like nuclear weapons: I've got em coz everyone else has. But as soon as you use them they fuck everything up.

-- Danny de Vito in "Other People's Money"

A good lawyer is a great liar. ^*

--Edward Ward

A tradesman of Windham, Connecticut, having occasion to boil a number of cattle's feet, threw the bones at the back of the courthouse. An attorney asked what bones they were? A bystander replied that he believed them to be client's bones, as they were well picked.

-- Wheeler's North-American Calendar for 1793

Anonymous

"Lawyers Are":

One whose opinion is worth nothing unless paid for. -- English Proverb

A cat who settles disputes between mice.

A person whose profession consists of protecting his clients from other members of his profession.

People who can write a 10,000-word document and call it a brief.

The defendant who pleads their own case has a fool for a client, but at least there will be no problem with fee-splitting.

The judicial process is like a cow. The public is impaled on its horns, the government has it by the tail, and all the while the lawyers are milking it.

Old lawyers never die. They just establish law firms.

People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either being made.

He who has said that 'talk is cheap', has never hired a lawyer.

There are two kinds of lawyers, those who know the law and those who know the judge.

The trouble with the legal profession is that 98% of its members give the rest a bad name.

In the US, everything that is not prohibited by law is permitted.
In Germany, everything that is not permitted by law is prohibited.
In Russia, everything is prohibited, even if permitted by law.
In France, everything is permitted, even if prohibited by law.

You win some and you lose some, but you get paid for all of them.

Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!

A man who dies without a will has lawyers for his heirs. ^*

A man was prosecuted. The judge asked him, "Don't you need a lawyer?" To which he replies, "No, I don't need any, I'm going to tell the truth."

If it wasn't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them.

Talk is cheap... until lawyers get involved.

Bulls do not win bull fights; people do. People do not win people fights; lawyers do.

Old lawyers never die, they just lose their appeal.

A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.

Between grand theft and a legal fee, there only stands a law degree.

The Lawyer's Motto:

"Insofar as manifestations of functional deficiencies are agreed by any and all concerned parties to be imperceivable, and are so stipulated, it is incumbent upon said heretofore mentioned parties to exercise the deferment of otherwise pertinent maintenance procedures."

In Other Words:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Lawyer's creed: A man is innocent until proven broke.

Experts are people who know a great deal about very little and who go along learning more and more about less and less until they know practically everything about nothing.

Lawyers, on the other hand, are people who know very little about many things and keep learning less and less about more and more until they know practically nothing about everything.

Judges are people who start out knowing everything about everything but end up knowing nothing about anything because of their constant association with experts and lawyers.

The exact date that professional attorneys came into existence is unknown, although the first complaints about them were recorded in the twelfth century.

Two thirds of the world's lawyers are located in the United States. This has led, in some quarters, to occasional suggestions for a new export product.

Almost 37 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives and 53 percent of the U.S. Senate are comprised of lawyers. It's like buying chicken wire from the fox.

Be frank and explicit with your lawyer... It is his business to confuse the issue afterwards.

And God said: "Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan."