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Who really said it

A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client

Not Abraham Lincoln — an anonymous legal proverb Anonymous (an old law adage) In print by 1795 · described then as an Italian proverb
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

This is a proverb of unknown authorship, not a Lincoln original. A partial match appears as early as 1682 (“he who will be his own Counsellour, shall be sure to have a Fool for his Client”), and the lawyer-specific wording is in print by 1795, where Quote Investigator ↗ notes it was credited to an Italian proverb. The attribution to Abraham Lincoln is late and undocumented.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client” Anonymous legal proverb, in print by 1795 — often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Abraham Lincoln. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Anonymous — an old legal proverb — English/Italian legal proverb · popularly mis-credited to Lincoln. Theme: "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source

Type
Anonymous legal proverb
Earliest lawyer wording
The British Critic, 1795
Earliest partial match
William De Britaine, Humane Prudence, 1682
Attribution status
Mis-credited to Abraham Lincoln (late, undocumented)

It is an old law adage, copied from the Italian proverb … that the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client.

As printed in The British Critic (1795), per Quote Investigator ↗. Wordings vary (“his client” / “a client”) across the 18th–19th-century sources.

Quote Investigator: A Man Who Is His Own Lawyer Has a Fool for a Client

What the record shows

  • A partial match — “he who will be his own Counsellour, shall be sure to have a Fool for his Client” — appears in William De Britaine’s Humane Prudence (1682), per Quote Investigator ↗.
  • The lawyer-specific wording is in print by 1795 in The British Critic, which frames it as an old law adage “copied from the Italian proverb,” per Quote Investigator ↗.
  • Henry Kett’s The Flowers of Wit (1814) prints “every man who is his own lawyer, has a fool for a client,” the earliest example cited by phrases.org.uk ↗.
  • Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the saying is anonymous and circulated before Lincoln’s birth in 1809; a popular Lincoln credit surfaces only much later (e.g., a 1966 Bewitched episode).

This is an anonymous proverb with no identifiable author or single originating work — its lawyer-specific wording was already circulating in print by 1795. Because no fixed authored source underlies the line, no copyright status can be asserted; the early printed texts that carry it (1682–1815) are long in the public domain, but the proverb itself is not a copyrightable authored work.

Fact-check

Why Lincoln gets the credit — and why it's wrong

The line is routinely pinned on Abraham Lincoln, a famous frontier lawyer, which makes the attribution feel plausible. But the proverb was already in print decades before Lincoln was born.

Abraham Lincoln Misattributed

No documented speech, letter, or contemporary account has Lincoln coining or uttering this exact line. Quote Investigator ↗ finds the Lincoln credit is late and unsupported; a widely-seen instance is a 1966 Bewitched episode that attributes it to him.

An anonymous law adage / Italian proverb Proverb

The lawyer-specific wording appears in The British Critic in 1795 as “an old law adage, copied from the Italian proverb,” with partial forms back to 1682 — well before Lincoln (b. 1809), per Quote Investigator ↗.

It’s an anonymous legal proverb in print by 1795 — not a Lincoln original, per Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

An adage older than the man it's credited to

The saying warns that anyone who represents himself in a legal dispute lacks the detachment a real advocate would bring — his “client” is poorly served because his “lawyer” is himself. It is one of a family of parallel proverbs, including “he who is his own doctor has a fool for a patient.”

Because Lincoln was the era’s most famous self-taught lawyer, the proverb migrated onto him in the 20th century — a textbook case of a floating aphorism attaching to a magnetic name long after the words themselves were coined.

In print by 1795, and called an Italian proverb even then.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Humility

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator — full origin tracequoteinvestigator.com

Dedicated investigation dating the adage to 1682/1795 and calling it anonymous, predating Lincoln.
Phrases.org.uk — meaning & originphrases.org.uk

Notes uncertain proverbial origin; cites Henry Kett's 1814 Flowers of Wit as an early printing.
Quote Investigator — the doctor variantquoteinvestigator.com

Companion piece on the parallel ‘his own doctor has a fool for a patient’ adage family.
Albany Law Review — self-representation historyalbanylawreview.org

Legal-scholarship treatment of the ‘fool for a client’ maxim and self-representation.
Alameda County Bar Association — the maxim explainedacbanet.org

Bar-association overview of the proverb and its use in modern practice.

The author

About Anonymous — an old legal proverb

Anonymous — an old legal proverb

In print by 1795 · English/Italian legal proverb · popularly mis-credited to Lincoln

This adage belongs to the anonymous proverb tradition, not to any single author. Its earliest known lawyer-specific printing (1795, The British Critic) explicitly calls it an Italian proverb, and partial forms about being “one’s own counsellor” go back to William De Britaine’s Humane Prudence (1682). Abraham Lincoln, a practicing lawyer, may well have repeated it, but he did not originate it and no contemporary record documents him saying this exact line.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Quote Investigator

Garson O’Toole (Quote Investigator), “A Man Who Is His Own Lawyer Has a Fool for a Client,” QuoteInvestigator.com, July 30, 2019. Earliest lawyer-specific wording documented in The British Critic (London, 1795), described there as an old law adage copied from an Italian proverb.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-man-who-is-his-own-lawyer-has-a-fool-for-a-client

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