For although I do not mean to assert that it is usually the practice of renowned and learned sages to shorten the road to any great conclusion — their course indeed being rather to lengthen the distance by various circumlocutions and discursive staggerings like unto those in which drunken men, under the pressure of a too mighty flow of ideas, are prone to indulge — still I do mean to say, and do say distinctly, that it is the invariable practice of many mighty philosophers, in carrying out their theories, to evince great wisdom and foresight in providing against every possible contingency which can be supposed at all likely to affect themselves. Thus to do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end will justify, the amount of the right, or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the distinction between the two, being left entirely to the philosopher concerned, to be settled and determined by his clear, comprehensive, and impartial view of his own particular case.
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.
(Substitute ‘lawyer’ for ‘philosopher’.)
Jamie Stern-Weiner 