Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
How many cases have you won without using at least five or six "constructive lies"? Even when your client's totally in the right, there are those bad facts in a case that must be massaged. And by massaged, I mean spun. And by spun, I mean avoided, forgotten or shaded in a manner suggesting the presence of events diametrically opposed to those which actually took place. And by that I mean, how many times have you tried a case without employing "lawyer's lies"?
Exactly.
Now, remove the word "lawyer's." Because that in itself is misleading. The only descriptive that honestly fits is "lies." You have lied, I have lied. Every litigator has lied. Hundreds of times over his career.
It doesn't wilt the soul for me. If no one lied, we wouldn't have courts.
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I'll leave it to Sidd to defend the profession, but to me there's a difference between presenting facts that are not The Truth (because they are incomplete, or misleading, or even because their sole witness is a person you know to be a liar) and saying things that are lies. We privilege FBI agents to lie in order to accomplish the tasks we have set out for them, and that's unique -- when lawyers lie, they're violating an oath they gave and a rule of professional conduct, but when FBI agents lie they're acting working the official job description. I'm not saying they lie on the stand -- heaven forfend! -- but I think they're uncomfortable being on the stand because they're not in control in a very specific way: they've lost the option to tell an untruth without consequence, and that's why they squirm.
