The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
I'm a trained lawyer, after all, so I don't have to admit to anything.
I don't know that I could do a procedural legal drama and spend all my time in a courtroom talking legal jargon that I don't necessarily understand.
The contracts for 'Idol' are definitely very intimidating at first. There's lots of fine, fine details that you have to read through.
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.
"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."
One listens to one's lawyer prattle on as long as one can stand it and then signs where indicated.
That very document [Constitution] does little to serve people when Supreme Court decisions are written so that even high-priced lawyers can't figure them out.
The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.
When you can spell subpoena without thinking about it, that's when you know you've made it.
I'm not a lawyer, and maybe I should have used more specific legal language.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we do to each other.
When I was in law school I was taught that the great writers were people like [Oliver Wendell] Holmes Jr. and [Benjamin N.] Cardozo. But you go back and read their prose and it's sort of perfumed and very ornate and show-offy. And they're constantly striving for these abstractions that seem archaic nowadays.
Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.
The minute you read something and you can't understand it, you can be sure it was written by a lawyer. Then, if you give it to another lawyer to read and he don't know just what it means, then you can be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer. If it's in a few words and is plain, and understandable only one way, it was written by a non-lawyer.
A lot of people probably don't realize how difficult it is to stick to that lawyer speak when you're not a lawyer. I see everyone on 'The Good Wife' - everyone, people who have been there since day one - struggling with that language because it is just not how people talk.
Every form of power comes down to language. In law, there's all kinds of words you don't know if you're not a lawyer and that gives them power. In business, it's the same thing.
There's no question there's enough information available to all of us in this society for darn near anything. The problem is the quality of the information, the presentation of it... You shouldn't have to be a lawyer.
But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.
Nothing in fine print is ever good news.
With all due respect to lawyers, it's wonderful that you have this intricate knowledge. You break down words to the nth degree. And sometimes I find it rather disgusting. And it goes on and on.
Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause.
He has the common feeling of his profession. He enjoys a statement twice as much if it appears in fine print, and anything that turns up in a footnote... takes on the character of divine revelation.
Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
