Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A Lawyer Explains His Profession

If you are thinking about hiring a lawyer, you should keep in mind the following words:

"...it's anger that drives us and delivers us [negligence lawyers]. It's not any kind of love, either--love for the underdog or the victim, or whatever you want to call them. Some litigators like to claim that. The losers.
No, what it is, we're permanently pissed off, the winners, and practicing law is a way to be socially useful at the same time, that's all. It's like a discipline; it organizes and controls us; probably keeps us from being homicidal.
Certainly we get paid well for it, which is a satisfaction, yes, but not a motivation, because the real satisfaction, the true motivation, is the carnage and the smoldering aftermath and the trophy heads that get hung up on the den wall. I love it."
--Mitchell Stephens, Esquire, The Sweet Hereafter: Novel
by Russell Banks (HarperCollins, 1991)

No comments:

Post a Comment