Marcia Clark Quotes

One lawyer told me that he never drinks water or eats in front of the jury because they can't do either one.

I try to do two moot courts for every Supreme Court case (and one to two for courts of appeals), and to ensure I am being mooted by people who know the Supreme Court well and are coming to the case fresh.

So I don't blame Boies for the decision of the Court at all.

I know what to say, how to say it, how to bring profile to the issues I care about and people want to listen to me.

My goal is to share information and to educate. But am I an activist? No, no, no. I don't believe in pushing things on people.

I feel that it's my duty to persuade more people to take part in relevant causes.

I'm a lawyer; I win arguments for a living.

I like the law. I like the part that's about reasoning, about persuasion, about telling stories, about trying to build structures that fall within rules.

I think the best way to fight your detractors is to produce positive results and not think about them, but think about winning the hearts and minds of North Carolinians - or Americans - on good policy.

We win with facts that are well expressed and frequently communicated; we lose with silence and indifference to the broader social context.

If you believe in something, be willing to explain it.

Senator Tester is wise enough to make sure his voice is heard in a positive manner to get things done.

At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice, that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first of all to do so, had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while it was going on.

Progress begins with the minority. It is completed by persuading the majority, by showing the reason and the of the step forward, and that is accomplished by appealing to the intelligence of the majority.

At the trial Stubbs chose to act as his own lawyer, but a conflict over his fee led to ill feelings.

I think the most important thing is to, without belligerence, stand up for what want. Argue compellingly if someone tries to change your script. Yeah, legally they can if they want to. But rather than give up, as some of the writers do, and just wail about how your script got rewritten, it's much more difficult - but well within the realm of possibility - to argue very sincerely, calmly, and reasonably from your point of view, such that the director or the producer might decide, "All right, let's do it that way."

Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade.

Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.

Your lawyer is your true mercenary. Under his code honor consists in making the best possible fight in exchange for the biggest possible fee. He is frankly for sale to the highest bidder.

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.

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.

Because jurors have an extraordinary amount of power over the situation and of the people and the story in front of them, they tend to pay pretty intense attention to what's happening.

Speak out tirelessly with conviction.

What I endeavor to do is shine a light on what happens at the court, both as a law clerk and then as a litigator litigating and winning major cases in front of the Supreme Court over and over and over again.

Objection!" Metz shouts. Grounds?" the judge asks. Well...he's my witness!