"I have a high opinion of lawyers. With all their faults, they stack up well against those in every other occupation or profession. They are better to work with or play with or fight with or drink with than most other varieties of mankind." - Harrison Tweed, American Lawyer
We'll be dining with the lawyers of the St. Pete Bar Association today for lunch and we're going to a cocktail party tonight for lawyers and other professsionals. Looking forward to all the fun - laywers tell the best stories!
On thinking like a lawyer....
"Law school taught me one thing: how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different." - Hart Pomerantz, American Lawyer
"Good law schools teach you to think like lawyers. But the top law schools teach young people to think; just to think. And that makes a potentially great lawyer." - Norm Sherman, American Lawyer
Now ponder these two quotes....
"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., American Clergyman and Civil Rights Leader
"Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones." - Dennis Diderot, 18th Century French Encyclopedist.
A good lawyer could argue that either of these two inconsistent quotes are true, a great lawyer could probably argue that they were both true at the same time. I'm pretty sure I could come up with good arguments for both theory and I might even be able to argue both are true, but given the choice I'd take MLK's side.
"Anyone who believes a better day dawns when lawyers are eliminated bears the burden of explaining who will take their place. Who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence, ... " - John J. Curtin, Jr.; American Lawyer
"As physicians are the preservers of the sick, so are the laws of the injured." - Epictetus, 4th-Century B.C. Greek philosopher.
"The purpose of law is to prevent the strong from always having their way." - Ovid, 1st-Century Roman Poet.
I especially like this quote since it relates to the practice of personal injury law in that the law protects, or is supposed to protect, the victims and the injured against the big business tactics of the insurance companies. If you haven't seen the movie "The Rainmaker", or if you haven't seen it lately, go rent it and pay particular attention to the way the insurance company operates. Of course justice prevails in the end so its a feel good movie for me (even if there are some jabs at the practice of law in the beginning of the movie); overall this is a great movie about how the powerful try to take advantage of the weak but how the law protects the little guy.
