arch-crooks

Updated: July 31, 2026

When the district attorney arose and the jury turned to him with uplifted faces, then, for the first time, I realized the real attitude of the community toward us; for in scathing terms he denounced us both as men not merely who defended criminals but who, in fact, created them; as plotters against the administration of justice; as arch-crooks, who lived off the proceeds of crimes which we devised and planned for others to execute.

Arthur Cheney Train - The Confessions of Artemas Quibble : Being the Ingenuous and Unvarnished History of Artemas Quibble, Esquire, One-Time Practitioner in the New York Criminal Courts, Together with an Account of the Divers Wiles, Tricks, Sophistries, Technicalities, and Sundry Artifices of Himself and Others of the Fraternity, Commonly Yclept "Shysters" or "Shyster Lawyers"