| Editor's note: The following quotes appeared in Texas Lawyer articles in 2008.
"I think what happens when you have repeat grand jurors, they almost become professional grand jurors, and they get drunk with the power that grand jurors have. . . . They're supposed to be an independent body. But their authority ends when the true bill or no bill is issued."
— Houston criminal-defense attorney Dick DeGuerin.
"Some of these groups say there's a scandal or the entire court is corrupt. If there were corruption going on inside this court, I'd be the first one to sound off. If I saw that, it would end. And I think when you use words like 'corruption' and 'scandal' and 'cloud' you are undermining the court as an institution. It's an illegitimate attack unless you have the evidence, because people come to our court for redress of grievances; the public has to have confidence in it. If it is truly corrupted and there are crimes going on, then certainly the public needs to know. But if it's basically political attacks, and they are broadcast in the public arena, it hurts the court as an institution, and that distresses me greatly."
— Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson.
"Our rocket is still flying high."
— U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis of Tyler, saying he has not encountered difficulties in managing the numerous patent cases pending in his court.
"We're not manufacturing shoes. We want to give the right answers. And it's regrettable. We can't push them [the court] along sometimes because of the issues."
— Ken Law, chief justice of Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals, on complaints about his court's slow opinion production.
"When you have such a large number of judges taking over the courthouse, lawyers get nervous, courthouse staff get anxious, the local bar goes into a snit-fit. It's just a lot happening at once."
— Darlene Ewing, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party and a family law solo, discussing Democrats' victories of 23 of 27 trial benches in Harris County on Nov. 4.
"It would take a Democratic sweep of historic proportions, the likes we haven't seen since LBJ, for Texas to go blue."
— Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
"I still use it for personal notes and little cards. And I use it to keep good quotes. And every once in awhile, you run across a form, and I haul out my IBM."
— Chief Justice David Chew of El Paso's 8th Court of Appeals on the $50 campaign expense he reported to repair his mid-1980s IBM Selectric II typewriter.
"I work at their pleasure, and it was their pleasure that I not work."
— Former Chief Public Defender Brad Lollar, who resigned after clashes with the Dallas County Commissioners Court.
"This is fascism."
— Austin solo Adam Reposa, regarding the State Bar of Texas' grievance against him for, among other things, making an obscene gesture during an appearance before a judge.
"As scary as it seems out there, it's a good time to be in my group."
— Barbara M. Boudreaux, a first-year associate with Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr in Dallas, regarding her work on restructuring and bankruptcy matters.
"You graduate high school, get into college, graduate college, apply to law school, get into law school, graduate law school, pass the bar and get a job. The final big hurdle in that is making partner. It's a lifetime of work after that."
— Jason Bennett on becoming a partner in Baker Botts in Dallas.
"The best part of the story was the Apple Mac floated about 10 feet up along with the desk it was sitting on. And it was untouched. Steve Jobs ought to know that."
— Keith Bassett discussing what happened to his father Roland Bassett's law office computer because of Hurricane Ike.
