For almost 40 years, I’ve had it in my brain that the line (from The Merchant of Venice) was “The devil, when pressed, can cite scripture to his advantage.”
It is not. Shakespeare’s line (in Act I Scene 3) is, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose!”1
The phrase “bucket list” was apparently coined for the 2007 film The Bucket List. If you remember hearing or using it before then, you are, I regret to say (and apparently), wrong.
I have an aphorism that I think is wholly my own: The client who needs you to believe he didn’t do it, did it.
Let me expand, using “innocent” for “factually and legally innocent, and “guilty” for “factually guilty, albeit legally innocent.” The “legally” part of that is all that matters to me. It’s no more fun (in fact, less fun) to get an innocent person’s case dismissed, or to get that innocent person acquitted at trial than to beat the guilty person’s case—to preserve his legal innocence.
It’s more fun to walk the guilty guy, because that’s the game. The game is not about what the facts are; it’s about what the State can prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of six or twelve the facts are, and if I can shut them down pretrial, with my motions-and-pretrial-habeas practice, or in trial, by preventing them from telling a better story than me, I win.
Everyone expects the innocent guy to walk; often everyone is disappointed. Nobody expects the guilty guy to walk. It’s great fun to stymie everyone’s expectations.2
And … oh yeah, the client wins too.
At any rate, the innocent client puts his fate in your hands, but the guilty client needs you to believe him.
If you didn’t do the thing, you know that you didn’t do the thing. If you did the thing, though, you know—you believe, have reason to believe, and are correct in believing—it, so in order to insulate yourself it is important to you that your advocate believe that you didn’t do it.
In other words, someone between you and the State must believe that you didn’t do it, so if you don’t believe it, it’s important that your lawyer believe it. If it’s important that your lawyer believe it, that’s because you don’t.
So that’s the theory behind my aphorism, The client who needs you to believe he didn’t do it, did it.
And I think that aphorism is my own invention.
But I also thought that I heard “bucket list” before 2007, and thought the Shakespeare line was “The devil, when pressed….”