If the I.Q doesn't fit, you must acquit.
There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, memorandum for law lecture, 1850
Good lawyers know the law. Great lawyers know the judge.
ANONYMOUS
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Lawyers have a way of seeing that sets them apart from the rest of us. In some way this special vision makes them invaluable, and in other ways, repulsive. Lawyers are much more focused on rational, logical, and objective criteria to the exclusion of the emotional, subjective, and sometimes irrational responses to the world. Moreover, lawyers like to show no emotion, and possess a particular disdain for the emotions that are found in others, which has the quality of making them seem inhuman.
Lawyers are merchants of misery.
Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers -- and most others in the profession -- will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.
ALAN DERSHOWITZ
The only secret that the lawyer really possesses about the law is that no one can ever be certain of what the law is.... The lawyer is accustomed to the ways of bending and changing rules to suit his (or his client's) purposes, to dance in the shadows of the law's ambiguities. Rules hold no particular terror for the lawyer, just as the sight of blood holds no terror for the surgeon. Because he operates a system of rules, the lawyer becomes indifferent to them in the way that a doctor becomes indifferent to the humanity of the body that is lying on the operating table.
Loopholes, technicalities, and procedural irregularities make us think that lawyers are more interested in paper, forms, and procedures than they are in the everyday struggles of human beings. We want counselors, not bureaucrats; we want lawyers who possess legal knowledge but who are not mere legal machines. Clients come to lawyers because they are regarded--or they regard themselves--as problem solvers. But it so often feels as if the problems remain unattended to, or worse, that the lawyer's intervention ends up creating more problems--not putting out smoke, but instead kindling the flames, or starting new fires altogether.
THANE ROSENBAUM
Lawyers are men whom we hire to protect us from lawyers.
ELBERT HUBBARD
I don't know who the great lawyers are, and I presume you can't get to them. I know of no case where it can be said for certain that they took part. They defend some people, but you can't get them to do that through your own efforts, they only defend the ones they want to defend. But I assume a case they take on must have progressed beyond the lower court. It's better not to think of them at all, otherwise you'll find the consultations with the other lawyers, their advice and their assistance, extremely disgusting and useless.