“The fundamental tension of the profession is the struggle between bold advocacy of the client's interests and the need to establish and hold to limits that prevent advocacy from leading to irrational and inequitable results; and thus the lawyer's job in practice is to be on one hand the impassioned representative of his client to the world, and on the other the wise representative to his client of the legal system, and the society, explaining and upholding the demands and restrictions which that system places on them both. ”

“Every lawyer shall tell his or her client that becoming involved with the legal system is like three years of experimental chemotherapy, one hundred percent guaranteed not to work.”

“As a defense lawyer, he refused to condemn his clients. Everyone else in the system--the cops, the prosecutors, the juries and judges--would take care of that; they didn't need his help.”

“For a lawyer to do less than his utmost is, I strongly feel, a betrayal of his client. Though in criminal trials one tends to focus on the defense attorney and his client the accused, the prosecutor is also a lawyer, and he too has a client: the People. And the People are equally entitled to their day in court, to a fair and impartial trial, and to justice.”

“Criminal law is one of the few professions where the client buys someone else's luck. The luck of most people is strictly non-transferrable. But a good criminal lawyer can sell all his luck to a client, and the more luck he sells the more he has to sell.”

“My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.”