Before the law

“You see, John, lawyers have much less respect for the law than the rest of us. It’s familiarity, you see, doing its little breeding job again. A lawyer isn’t there to tell you what the law is, you’ll get that from a policeman or judge. A lawyer is there to tell you what you can do anyway.”

Irwin said, “Think of yourself as Dante, and the law as hell.”

“Okay,” John said.

“Your lawyer is Virgil. He takes you through it, and he gets you out the other side.”

From Donald E. Westlake’s Bad News