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New York was like that sometimes, content to let the polished veneer hide the rotting corpse in the basement.
true pickpocket artist—my dad, Pat Flynn. Most pickpockets don’t like to be called ‘pickpockets,’ and always refer to themselves as cannons.
Most jurors don’t want to be jurors. The minority that actively want to be jurors should be avoided at all costs.
Bow ties spell danger to trial lawyers; no one is more strident in their views than a man in a bow tie.
Most hotshot lawyers ignore court staff that they would call the “little people.” They did so at their peril and at their cost. Most of the time, the little people were, in fact, the best people.
My dad told me you can’t con an honest man, but the hard part was getting the dishonest mark to trust you. Good fraud was all about trust.
The first rule of the hustler’s bible—give the people what they want.
“You haven’t brought me my coffee yet,” I said.
Tipping the ash from his cigar onto the floor, Volchek said, “Victor, get Mr. Flynn some coffee.”
You don’t need a bomb to win this case. You’ve already got one—I’m the bomb.”
In a criminal case, there are two doors for a jury to walk through: guilty or not guilty. Miriam tried to push the jury through her door. I wanted to hold my door open for them and welcome them in. Juries behave just like every other person on the street—they don’t like being pushed into anything; they like having a choice.
At ten years of age, Amy was in that magic time of her youth when I was still the most important man in her life. My pal, Judge Harry Ford, had told me to enjoy it because in a year or two I would turn into a nobody who ran a free car service.
The truth has no place in a courtroom. The only thing that matters is what the prosecution can prove.
They say good lawyers never ask a question unless they already know the answer. This is true, but it’s not because lawyers have any greater knowledge than anyone else. It’s because we give you the answer we want in the question.
