Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Lawyers may manipulate truth to defend clients regardless of morality. Professional duty can conflict with personal ethics.
In plain terms
Some lawyers twist truth to help even the worst clients.
What can you take from it?
Professional roles may require defending unethical actions.

Where it applies

  • legal defense
  • ethical dilemmas
  • professional conduct

Putting it to work

  • legal ethics training
  • moral boundary setting
  • case review

Questions to consider

  • Where is the line between duty and lying?
  • Should all clients get equal defense?

Another view

Defense attorneys serve a vital role in fair trials.

More from Anthony Trollope

  1. Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because the…

    Permalink to quote #2
  2. In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demi…

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have stri…

    Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant quote #37
  2. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities.

    Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson quote #109
  3. The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.

    Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle quote #1