Edward Bennett Williams Quotes

I couldn't do that as attorney general. Why? Because they are my clients. You can't say they're not doing what they ought to be doing when you are the attorney general.

Government lawyers, like private ones, face the problem routinely of aiding in the defense and development of positions in whose correctness they don't believe.

When you have an attorney giving you advice, it would be nice to know what their financial relationship is to the advice.

There are some lawyers who think of themselves as basically instruments of whoever their clients are, and they pride themselves on their professional craft.

A license to practice law is not a license to violate it.

Lawyers have to make a living, and can only do so by inducing people to believe that a straight line is crooked.

And if these be unprincipled agents who scruple at nothing, he will be a bold man who will deny that there are always to be found men at the bar who lend their services most cordially to back and support these agents in their most desperate cases.

The legal profession is overrun with money-makers, who regard it only as a business by which money is made, with little or no thought of the quality of the means used. We greatly need many more lawyers who regard the profession as a ministry in the temple of Justice.

I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.

What I've learned over the years... judges are conscientious... not like lawyers, who give opinions.

It is interesting that I have gone through the process of representing clients as an ex-athlete. I am certainly not naive to think that the possibility of corruption isn't there.

It's the duty of a lawyer to represent anyone for whom a responsible argument could be made.

Every good lawyer knows that if there is something in his client's cause that so personally offends you, morally, religiously, or if it so offends you that you think it would undermine your ability to do your duty as a lawyer, then you shouldn't take it on.

Certainly, when I was a boy, people liked to believe that lawyers were kind of pillars of goodness of the likes of Atticus Finch in 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'

I will defend anyone as long as the client gives me total control of the case and pays up front.

For me, I don't participate in the filming when I represent a reality show star in a case, because that would mean waiving my right to attorney-client privilege, and that would hamper my ability to mount an effective case.

As for lawyers, it's more fun to play one than to be one.

The houses of lawyers are roofed with the skins of litigants.

The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in

… the comfortable fiction that all lawyers are skilled or even competent craftsmen in representing the fundamental rights of their clients.

A President cannot call men from all parts of the country during the time between his nomination and his election, seek their advice, their counsel, their service, their cooperation in his personal behalf and in behalf of the party ... and also tell them in the same breath, to see the Secretary of War, the Attorney General and the Postmaster General about a presidential nomination.

That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

A lawyer who is not a social engineer, is a social parasite.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.