160 Insightful Lawyer Quotes About Justice For All

These incredible lawyer quotes about justice will remind you that crime doesn’t pay.

Being a lawyer and working within the criminal justice system can be a difficult job.

Tell us your favorite lawyer quote in the comment section below.

What are the benefits of reading these lawyer quotes?

These inspirational quotes about practicing law will highlight the dedication it takes to fight crime.

Whether you’re just starting law school or you run your own legal firm, these motivational words will delight you.

These lawyer quotes will help you:

• write the perfect speech for graduating from law school
• fuel your passion for law and justice
• find the perfect words for a card for a law school graduate you love

Lawyers are educated, hard-working, righteous individuals with a passion for the judiciary system.

Practicing law can often be a thankless, underappreciated job, but someone has to do it.

These wonderful quotes will make you appreciate lawyers and see them in a new light.

The lawyer quotes listed below will make you think, laugh, and dream.

Read these words of wisdom to shift your perspective on the legal system.

Once you understand the complex nuances of practicing law, you’ll gain a new respect for your lawyer.

If you or someone you know is interested in crime and justice, you’ll understand the passion and struggle these law quotes highlight. 

Also, check out these insightful immigration quotes discussing the social issue.

If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. 

Check out more inspirational quotes on our motivational quotes category page.

Lawyer quotes about crime and justice

1. “Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.” – Will Rogers

2. “If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.” – Charles Dickens

3. “You cannot live without the lawyers, and certainly you cannot die without them.” – Joseph H. Choate

4. “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” – Robert Frost

5. “A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a “brief.” – Franz Kafka

6. “I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.” – Stephen Wright

7. “Law students are trained in the case method, and to the lawyer everything in life looks like a case.” – Edward Packard, Jr.

8. “A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth.” – Patrick Murray

9. “The good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get you out of a scrape.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. “Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.” – Michelle Obama

Lawyer quotes about practicing law

11. “Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.” – Jeremy Bentham

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12. “To me, a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We’re all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there is a problem the lawyer is the only person who has read the inside of the top of the box.” – Jerry Seinfeld

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13. “It is the lawyers who run our civilization for us — our governments, our business, our private lives. Most legislators are lawyers; they make our laws. Most presidents, governors, commissioners, along with their advisers and brain-trusters are lawyers; they administer our laws. All the judges are lawyers; they interpret and enforce our laws. There is no separation of powers where the lawyers are concerned. There is only a concentration of all government power — in the lawyers.” – Fred Rodell

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14. “Don’t misinform your Doctor nor your Lawyer.” – Benjamin Franklin

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15. “A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.” – Sir Walter Scott

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16. “The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.” – Henry David Thoreau

17. “A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.” – Thomas Jefferson

18. “How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

19. “Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.” – Hunter S. Thompson

20. “Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Lawyer quotes to elevate your perspective

21. “As the lawyer, I found most of it was a matter of research, which I was great at — that’s what I did to death — and then basically persuading people that you’re right, and they’re wrong… I found that the easiest of all the professions to impersonate.” – Frank Abagnale

22. “Lawyers are men who will swear black is white — if they are paid for it.” – Edward Counsel

23. “A lawyer’s dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.” – Samuel Butler

24. “He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.” – Charles Lamb

25. “Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial. It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It’s a marathon.” – Kamala Harris

26. “Finding a good barber is like finding a good lawyer — you gotta go to the same guy.” – Ronny Chieng

27. “A good lawyer knows how to shut up when he’s won his case.” – Alan Dershowitz

28. “I’m a soulless lawyer. Give me any opinion and I can argue it.” – Megyn Kelly

29. “Credentials are critical if you want to do something professional. If you want to become a doctor or lawyer or teacher or professor, there is a credentialing process. But there are a lot of other things where it’s not clear they’re that important.” – Peter Thiel

30. “The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.” – Jeremy Bentham

Lawyer quotes to broaden your thoughts

31. “There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.” – Jean Giraudoux

32. “Of course, some would say if you have a performing inclination, then you should become a lawyer. That’s a platform we use, or a priest. You know, anywhere you lecture and pontificate to people.” – Rowan Atkinson

33. “I’m trusting in the Lord and a good lawyer.” – Oliver North

34. “A lawyer wants to get his client off the hook. And even if he knows the client is guilty, he is going to find ways and means of getting him off the hook.” – Mahathir Mohamad

35. “If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputation — unfairly.” – Mario Cuomo

36. “Lawyers are operators of toll bridges which anyone in search of justice must pass.” – Jane Bryant Quinn

37. “After years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless.” – Michelle Alexander

38. “A lawyer is a gentleman that rescues your estate from your enemies and then keeps it to himself.” – Henry P. Brougham

39. “One of the things I was taught in law school is that I’d never be able to think the same again – that being a lawyer is something that’s part of who I am as an individual now.” – Anita Hill

40. “If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.” – Samuel Johnson

Insightful lawyer quotes

41. “After 25-plus years as a lawyer, prosecutor, and defense attorney, I have developed a deep appreciation for both the wisdom of the law and the role that jurists play in framing the rights and responsibilities that define our society.” – Eliot Spitzer

42. “How many lawyer jokes are there? One, the rest are true stories.” – Thomas F. Shubnell

43. “I’m a lawyer. I go for due process; I go for fairness and equity – these values mean a lot to me.” – Mohamed ElBaradei

44. “Most people ask questions because they want to know the answer; lawyers are trained never to ask questions unless they already know the answer.” – Lani Guinier

45. “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.” – Mario Puzo

46. “Lawyers have a way of seeing that sets them apart from the rest of us. In some way this special vision makes them invaluable, and in other ways, repulsive. Lawyers are much more focused on rational, logical, and objective criteria to the exclusion of the emotional, subjective, and sometimes irrational responses to the world. Moreover, lawyers like to show no emotion, and possess a particular disdain for the emotions that are found in others, which has the quality of making them seem inhuman.” – Thane Rosenbaum

47. “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.” – Robert Elliott Gonzales

48. “Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers — and most others in the profession — will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.” – Alan Dershowitz

49. “Lawyers are like professional wrestlers. They pretend to get mad and fight, but then they socialize after a trial is over.” – Robert Whitlow

50. “In the courtroom, it’s where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There’s a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I’ve always felt that way — I’ve been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.” – Woody Harrelson

More lawyer quotes

51. “Politicians were mostly people who’d had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.” – George R.R. Martin

52. “We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.” – Mario Puzo

53. “When cops are on the job they love lawyers like lions love hyenas, only minus the mutual respect.” – Reed Farrel Coleman

54. “Novelists write fiction. Lawyers speak fiction.” – Mike Hockney

55. “The lawyers know a dead man’s thoughts too well.” – Carl Sandburg

56. “When in court, the primary role of lawyers is not to prove or disprove innocence; unbeknown to almost all lawyers and their clients, it is to save the court time.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

57. “A very clever lawyer can create a lot of damage, we can only hope that lawyers never figure out how to manipulate physical law.” – R. A. Delmonico

58. “To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person – few love a spokesman for the despised and the damned.” – Clarence Darrow

59. “Some people don’t like lawyers, that is, until they need them.” – Kenneth Eade

60. “Nothing is easy, and, with respect to legal work, that was absolutely true.” – Kenneth Eade

Funny and interesting lawyer quotes

61. “I’m a lawyer; I win arguments for a living.” — Bob Goff

62. “A good lawyer is going to try to protect her client.” — John Kennedy

63. “Discipline is part of my professional training as a lawyer.” — Mohamed ElBaradei

64. “It’s every lawyer’s dream to help shape the law, not just react to it.” — Alan Dershowitz

65. “Ask any lawyer—if a prosecutor thinks he can win a case, he’ll prosecute it.” — Robert B. Weide

66. “In the last analysis, our every right is only worth what our lawyer makes it worth.” — Robert Kennedy

67. “I was a lawyer for about ten years. The law teaches one to see things from all different angles.” — Alex Flinn

68. “Everyone wants to say they hate lawyers, and yet I’ve never met a parent who didn’t want their kid to be a lawyer.” — Jessi Klein

69. “The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

70. “As a lawyer and a former prosecutor, I know the limits of the power and authority of the president. I know what is legal and what is not.” — Rodrigo Duterte

Entertaining and practical lawyer quotes

71. “As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man.” – Abraham Lincoln

72. “But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money.” – Lemony Snicket

73. “Being a lawyer is not merely a vocation. It is a public trust, and each of us has an obligation to give back to our communities.” – Janet Reno

74. “Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.” – Abraham Lincoln

75. “Your attitude will go a long way in determining your success, your recognition, your reputation and your enjoyment in being a lawyer.” – Joe Jamail

76. “The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.” – Antonin Scalia

77. “A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.” – Mark Twain

78. “Lawyers are men whom we hire to protect us from lawyers.” – Elbert Hubbard

79. “The minute you read something that you can’t understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.” – Will Rogers

80. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.” – Edmund Burke

Lawyer quotes on how they can be at odds with the law at times

81. “Necessity knows no law; I know some attorneys of the same.” – Benjamin Franklin

82. “Justice is doing for others what we would want done for us.” – Gary Haugen

83. “I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.” – Patrick O’Brian

84. “Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.” – George Bernard Shaw

85. “People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.” – Will Rogers

86. “Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.” – Oscar Wilde

87. “Well, I don’t know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.” – J. P. Morgan

88. “A divorce lawyer is a chameleon with a law book.” – Marvin Mitchelson

89. “A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table.” – Jean Kerr

90. “Lawyer – One skilled in the circumvention of the law.” – Ambrose Bierce

Classy Lawyer Quotes To Motivate Your Legal Case 

91. “Arguing with a lawyer is not the hardest thing in the world; not arguing is.” — Raheel Farooq

92. It is the business of a lawyer to find a hole to creep out of any law that is in his way; and if there is no hole, to make one.” — W. Ouseley

93. “Like all lawyers, I was delighted by gratitude. It happened so rarely.” ― C.J. Sansom

94. “Any lawyer worth his salt knew the first offer had to be rejected.” ― John Grisham

95. “A prisoner’s shackles would always be a lawyer’s joy.” ― Dennis E. Adonis

96. “Guilo, although a lawyer, never lied; at least not to his friends.” ― Donna Leon

97. “Trials for lawyers are like bills. It seems that you finish paying for one, and feel that feeling of relief, then it’s time to pay it again.” ― Kenneth G. Eade

98. “Hate lawyers all you want. Unlike you, we’ll never be replaced with robots. Case closed!” ― Natalya Vorobyova

99. “Lawyers forever overestimate their own intelligence and underestimate their clients’.” ― Portia Porter

100. “What they say about lawyers being useless isn’t entirely true.” ― Jennifer Arnett

Lawyer Quotes From Passionate Lawyers About Their Career

101. “I cannot write as well as some people; my talent is in coming up with good stories about lawyers.That is what I am good at.” — John Grisham

102.  “A lawyer’s duty is to read the law well himself, then tell the people what it is, and let them act upon it.” — Brigham Young

103. “Nothing can make me madder than lawyers who don’t care about others.” — Janet Reno

104. “I was a lawyer and I loved it, but my Francesca was born, and a divorce followed way too soon after.” — Lisa Scottoline

105. “Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. By all rights they shouldn’t exist, but if some people have them, then you’d better have one, too, just in case.” — John Gierach

106. “Lawyers will always buckle under to something, whether its bribes, violence, court orders, or the weight of their own bullshit.” — James Alan Gardner

107. “I considered going into business or becoming a lawyer – not for the money, but for the thrill of problem-solving.” — Lisa Randall

108. “I dont want to stay a singer forever. I want to fulfill my dream career as a lawyer!” — Charice Pempengco

109. “This might seem impossible to believe, but some lawyers actually like lawyering.” — Charles Soule

110. “Some women take up the law and become lawyers. Other women lay down the law and become wives.” — Joan Rivers

Lawyer Quotes About Their Career

111. “It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.” ― Thomas Jefferson

112. “Lawyers are the foot soldiers of our Constitution.” ― Rennard Stricklan

113. “It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.” ― Thomas Jefferson

114. “Imagine the appeals, dissents and remandments, if lawyers had written The Ten Commandments.” ― Harry Bender

115. “Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

116. “Lawyers are the foot soldiers of our Constitution.” ― Rennard Stricklan

117. “As a lawyer who has dealt in defamation, I know that someone’s reputation has to be lowered in the eyes of right-thinking people to sue.” ― David Hunt

118. “Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

119. “Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damagers awards.” ― Jodi Picoult

120. “The law, as manipulated by clever and highly respected rascals, still remains the best avenue for a career of honourable and leisurely plunder.” ― Gabriel Chevallier

Lawyer Quotes on the Power and Purpose of Law

121. “My dream job would be a lawyer. I can talk my way out of anything, and I love cross-examining people. I think I’d be a really good lawyer.” ― Tamara Ecclestone

122. “Working as a lawyer, you have a lot of pressure. But if you go crazy, you are not going to get anything done! When I am under pressure, I am the most determined person in the world. I function very well.” ― Julie King

123. “Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than virtue.” ― Robert Wright

124. “Lawyers sometimes tell the truth. They’ll do anything to win a case.” ― Jeremy Benthama

125. “Like a human rights lawyer who uses the law to rectify wrongs, I use filmic storytelling for the same effect.” ― Pamela Yates

126. “We are very good judges for the mistakes of others, but very good defence lawyers for our own mistakes.” ― Nicky Gumbel

127. “Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

128. “Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away.” ― Lawrence Lessig

129. “The law is a system that protects everybody who can afford to hire a good lawyer.” ― Mark Twain

130. “I wanted to be a prosecutor – a criminal lawyer – because there’s nowhere where the stakes are higher, where you can wake up every day and believe in what you’re doing.” ― Preet Bharara

Lawyer Quotes for Legal Minds

131. “The good lawyer is the great salesman.” — Janet Reno

132. “If equity and human natural reason were allowed there would be no law, there would be no lawyers.” — Christina Stead

133. The first duty of society is justice.” — Alexander Hamilton

134. “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.” — Abraham Lincoln

135. “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.” — Abraham Lincoln

136. “Law is the business to which my life is devoted, and its practice is my bread and cheese.” — Matthew Hale

137. “The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the justice of it.” — Charles Macklin

138. “Law is a noble profession, and lawyers are the custodians of the law.” — Fali S. Nariman

139. “The law is not the private property of lawyers, nor is justice the exclusive province of judges and juries. In the final analysis, true justice is not a matter of courts and law books, but of a commitment in each of us to liberty and mutual respect.” — Jimmy Carter

140. “Justice is the constant and perpetual will to allot to every man his due.” — Domitus Ulpian

Lawyer Quotes that Define the Essence of Lawyers

141. “Law is a bridge. Lawyers are the bridge builders.” — Jean Sutton

142. If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.” — Julius Caesar

143. “The practice of law is a perfectly clear system of rules. It’s not unlike the rules for working with models.” — Haruki Murakami

144. “The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

145. “Especially from the legal end of things, the easiest thing for a big corporation or lawyer to say is no.” — Jeff Tremaine

146. “The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.” — Henry David Thoreau

147. “If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers in the first place.” — George Savile

148. “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” — Anatole France

149. “The law is what we live with; justice is sometimes harder to achieve.” — William Gladstone

150. “The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence.” — Abraham Lincoln

151. “The law’s a profession of the written word. Do you know what most lawyers want to be? Writers.” ― Amy Meyerson

152. “Any society that produces twice as many lawyers as it does poets and preachers is doomed.” ― John Fogarty

153. “The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.” ― Hilary Mantel

154. “I had warned her that lawyers shouldn’t marry other lawyers, that it only led to imbecile paralegals.” ― Craig Johnson

155. “A lawyer caught in the toils of a murder case is like a man newly fallen in love: his involvement is total.” ― Robert Traver

156. “In the rather informal survey I have taken over the years on intensity of interest in food by profession, lawyers rank only a few trades below concert pianists….” ― Calvin Trillin

157. “It was the time of year that makes every poet’s heart sing and every lawyer question their life choices.” ― Portia Porter

158. “Lawyers are Case Sensitive!” ― Nitya Prakash

159. “Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do” ― Paul Clement

160. “Lawyers get up in front of people, and they posture.” ― Meg Harding 

Which of these lawyer quotes motivates you the most?

Being a lawyer is a tough job that requires years of schooling and studying.

If you have a passion for crime, law, and justice, all the effort will be worthwhile.

Read these sayings and proverbs to inspire yourself when you need motivation.

This collection of quotes comes from the minds of legal experts, celebrities, and other legendary thinkers.

Listen to their advice and life experiences to elevate your perspective.

If you have patience and dedication, you can succeed at being a lawyer. 

The best lawyers have charisma, knowledge, and a strong work ethic.

If you or someone you know is a lawyer, inspire them with this collection of encouraging quotes.

These words will remind you that practicing law is a noble, important profession. 

What are your favorite lawyer quotes and sayings about crime and justice?

Let us know in the comment section below.