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.
There’s an old little jingle: ‘The chief use of slang is to show that you’re one of the gang.’ What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there’s a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there’s a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.
I had been very impressed with the courts we visited to see my father. The judges wearing wigs, the lawyers, the legal arguments – it was all exciting stuff for a kid.
It’s when the lawyers themselves become bad guys that you begin to have a serious problem.
Lawyers know how to take isolated complaints in a divorce case and build them into one big one.
I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they’re wrong. And not just admitting it – also realizing it.
What’s great about stand-up is that you can say whatever you want and go around the country, and sometimes the world, and work on it and see how people react. You don’t need Standards & Practices or notes from lawyers or producers to tell you what’s funny.
Jury instructions are so numerous and complex, it’s a wonder jurors ever wade through them. And so it should come as no surprise that they can sometimes get stuck along the way. The instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing even to lawyers. And reasonable doubt? That’s the hardest, most elusive one of all.
It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn’t.
I often make a joke of my parents, because I come from a Nigerian background and there’s a stereotype in the Nigerian community that all of us are going to be doctors and lawyers, and that’s just how it is. But upon reflection, my parents were always really supportive of me doing music.
I find the term ‘workaholic’ to be distasteful because it reminds me of the harried-looking lawyers I recall chained to their desks through nights and weekends during my lawyer days years ago.
I had the first XJ6 and then they became real popular with lawyers so I had to move on. The only problem with Jaguar is that you have to go to the gas station every couple blocks, and a mechanic once told me that if you don’t have the right attitude when you walk up to a Jag, it won’t start.
For the year after I left government service, I worked as a consultant to the Republican National Committee because the lawyers advised that was the proper way for me to comply with ethics regulations and continue to advise the President.
Everyone from my high school and junior college are now doctors and lawyers. I came from that kind of environment, but I chose to go on another path, even though I did promise my parents that I would get a degree. After that, I could do anything I wanted; that was the deal.
I treat people and I deal with my fighters and I deal with the fans like a real person. I don’t come out and read canned statements written by our lawyers.
No matter how many lawyers and lawsuits Obama throws at Arizona, we will have the American people and the Constitution on our side.
If you think about it, every single species is endangered. Homo sapiens at the front of the line, mosquitoes and lawyers at the back.
It is a different genre – a show about something other than doctors, lawyers and cops. Teachers are something completely different. I think it makes for very interesting television.
I remember in high school thinking that I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I realize I saw that movie ‘And Justice for All’ when I was a kid and thought, ‘That’s what lawyers do, and I want to get up and yell and scream in the middle of a courtroom.’
Everything bad that has ever happened to me has been caused by agents or lawyers.
We’re lawyers. We present the arguments, and the court sorts out the merits.
People have a false understanding of what our legal system is like – how it works/operates – from shows like ‘Law and Order,’ which suggest that lawyers appear on demand and do a tremendous amount of investigation and background research.
The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.
I think when you have lawyers arguing over whether you can keep a detainee at 46 degrees… for two hours, that’s not torture. It may be unpleasant, it may be coercive… but let’s say what torture actually is, and that’s not it.
Asian people are very practical and come from a conservative world. The parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers. There are casting calls for Asian children, but once the parents find out the children might miss school, they’re opposed to it.
My greatest reward is knowing for certain, as I do with many other acts and artistes, that without Jonathan King being alive and involved, Genesis would not exist, and the guys would have had careers as intended – as accountants and lawyers!
Lawyers claim that their clients have been grossly mistreated, which is what criminal defense lawyers are paid to do.
The Indian diaspora is not a capital-accumulating diaspora. The Indian diaspora is doctors, lawyers, professors. Or newspaper sellers. They are basically trade- or profession-oriented, and so they’re not major investors in their home country.
When an American veteran comes to VA, it is not up to him to employ a team of lawyers to get VA to say yes. It is up to VA to get the veteran to yes, and that is customer service.
The Nixon years were trying. They honed my judgment for everything I did later on. The experience also illustrated for me the importance of training young lawyers properly.
There’s lots of stuff about me being a fan of Cliff but not being gay. Which suggests that he is, but he’s not. Anyway, this is Channel 4, let their lawyers sort it out.
In the past, people have had to hire lawyers or consultants to try to figure out whether or not their property contains a federal waterway. We want to make sure that the definition is clear and concise.
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
When we did ‘Thirtysomething,’ television was either about doctors, lawyers, or cops.
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.
Lawyers work hard and, like us, they’re human, many of them.
Culturally, I have always been part of the proletariat. I lived side by side with the sons of glassblowers, fishermen and smugglers. The stories they told were shaper satires about the hypocrisy of authority and the middle classes, the two-facedness of teachers and lawyers and politicians. I was born politicized.
Lawyers have a dangerous job in Iran.
I remember my father taking us to meeting with lawyers, interviews with immigration officers, doing everything he could to get us that treasured Green Card – and the happiness, the sense of relief, when he finally did – we knew that we were welcome now, and we would be welcome tomorrow.
I think my legacy will be in what most people don’t like about me: my style – the separation between judge and lawyers, judge and politics, the real independence of the judiciary from the executive, from the legislative, from money. I’m criticized in Brazil because of that. In the end, I hope to prevail.
A lot of lawyers are set to tell me that it’s not my fault I like to eat.
One of the challenges for lawyers can be explaining, first of all, what the legal issue is and, second, its significance. And both of those are important.
In any profession, whether it’s teachers or doctors or lawyers, the more we say we’re not going to evaluate those people on the merits, I think that’s when the profession goes into decline.
Detention cells in Hong Kong are not pleasant. In Thailand they are even worse. In Hong Kong you are at least allowed to see your lawyers.
Having lost both my parents as a teenager, family is so important to me, and I cherish my time with my children and grandchildren. I have four children, and they all became lawyers – as I was myself before I got into music.
Private companies mostly manufacture medications that resemble what we’ve already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers, and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years.
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers.
I’m unique for a suspense author in that I don’t have a specialty background. A lot of suspense writers used to be lawyers or crime beat reporters. I didn’t even know a cop when I started out. I finally figured out that I could visit prisons – I just had to be willing to make the phone calls.
Lawyers, judges, doctors, shrinks, accountants, investigators and, not least, journalists could not do the most basic tasks without a veil of secrecy. Why shouldn’t the same be true of those professionals who happen to be government officials?
