The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

The Lawyer and Popular Culture 
Proceedings of a Conference 
(Littleton, CO:  Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1993) 
©Tarlton Law Library

The Lawyer as Hero?

Gerard J. Clark*

INTRODUCTION

     In his introduction to a recent Yale Law Journal symposium
dedicated to popular legal culture, Stewart Macaulay makes reference
to the idea of Clifford Geertz that thinking involves "a traffic in . . .
significant symbols . . . used to impose meaning upon experience."1
Cultural patterns, including aesthetics, provide programs or templates
for thinking, or processes of social and psychological categorization.2
Popular culture is such a template for thinking about law and lawyers.
It is thus relevant to help explain the way in which law operates in
American society today. Macaulay quotes Geertz further for the
proposition that human beings essentially think in terms of myth or
"a complex of characterizations and imaginings, stories about events
cast in imagery about principles" and that these myths, somewhat
akin to Jungian prototypes, shape human knowledge about law, and
indeed everything else as well.3 It is interesting, therefore, to try to
describe current myths of law and lawyer. Is the myth of lawyer the
sleazy money-grubbing hired gun or the defender of truth and
justice? Are courts corrupt bureaucracies or dispensers of truth and
justice?

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THE TRADITIONAL MYTH

     Webster, Lincoln and Darrow are American lawyers who have
over time become characters of mythic proportion. Webster is the
famous advocate who argued so many cases before the United States
Supreme Court. In doing so, he helped the Court to fashion sound
principles of constitutional interpretation. In Luther v. Borden,4 for
instance, oral argument lasted for two days and plumbed depths of the
Constitution's republican form of government clause. His emotion in
the Dartmouth College5 case is said to have brought tears to Chief
Justice Marshall's eyes and may well have been determinative in his
opinion. The myth is further enhanced by Benet's The Devil and
Daniel Webster where Webster defeats the devil himself before a jury
from hell on behalf of his fellow New Hampshirite who, in a moment
of weakness, made a pact with the Devil. He describes Webster as
follows:
You see, for a while, he was the biggest man in the
country. He never got to be President, but he was the
biggest man. There were thousands that trusted in him
right next to God Almighty, and they told stories
about him and all the things that belonged to him that
were like the stories of patriarchs and such. They said,
when he stood up to speak, stars and stripes came right
out in the sky, and once he spoke against a river and
made it sink into the ground. They said, when he
walked the woods with his fishing rod, the trout would
jump out of the streams right into his pockets, for they
knew it was no use putting up a fight against him; and,
when he argued a case, he could turn on the harps of
the blessed and the shaking of the earth underground.
That was the kind of man he was, and his big farm up
at Marshfield was suitable to him.6
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     With Lincoln, we think of the poor boy from the log cabin
who studied law by candlelight. As a lawyer, he represented ordinary
people at reasonable prices from his spartan law office where he
drafted documents by quill pen and earned the sobriquet of Honest
Abe. He used rhetorical skills in the campaign for a seat in the Senate
against the capable adversary Stephen Douglas. His inherent morality
led him to free the slaves and to save the union.
     In Darrow, we have the idealistic young lawyer from the
country who moved to Chicago to defend unions and progressive
causes; in Debs, the defender of the head of the Socialist Party who
was charged with espionage for a speech he made against the war.
     In the Scopes trial, Darrow vindicated the rights of free
expression and religion against the "monkey law," which prohibited
the teaching in public schools of any interpretation of the book of
Genesis but that sanctioned by the fundamentalists. The trial in a hot
courtroom in a fundamentalist atmosphere seems inextricably etched
in our minds by Spencer Tracy's portrayal of Darrow and Frederic
March's of William Jennings Bryan in Inherit the Wind (1960).
     Fictional characters have provided much to the substance of
the myth as well. In perhaps the most famous law film of all time, To
Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Gregory Peck, as Atticus Finch, defends
Tom Robinson, a black wrongfully accused of raping a white woman
in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. He and his children suffer both
the fate of outcasts, for being identified with blacks, and the
vengeance of the father of the victim, who sees Finch's defense as
casting doubt upon the virtue of his daughter.
     In Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the
defendant, Frederick Marion, is charged with the murder of a man
who raped his wife. After giving the famous "lecture" on the insanity
defense, James Stewart supplies a guilty, but morally somewhat
sympathetic, defendant with the only defense he could have pled. He
skillfully makes the defendant into a sympathetic figure whom the
jury finally acquits.
     But perhaps the greatest of modem American mythmakers is
the television character Perry Mason, played by Raymond Burr. A
large man with a booming voice who works diligently for clients,
Perry's greatest skills are in the courtroom. Over ten years, in 271

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episodes, with the reruns as popular as ever, he cross-examines the
perjurious witness with such skill, wit and tenacity that they break
down on the witness stand and confess to having perpetrated the ill
deed with which Perry's client is charged. In the end, Perry, the father
figure, makes it right.
     The lawyer-hero is the independent entrepreneur fighting for
justice for the common man with the exercise of superior wit and
intelligence and by means of hard work. Courts, staffed by skillful
judges, are places where duplicity is uncovered and ultimately where
good and evil clash, with good usually winning out. The law is an
instrument of justice and progress. The lawyer is the artisan who
invokes the law and fashions it into a tool for the good. Perhaps these
figures, both historical and fictional, have achieved such maturity in
the American mind because they partake of the "templates" to which
Macaulay referred in his introductory essay. The template of "hero"
is portrayed in the history of Western literature over and over again.
The attributes of those classical heroes are quite similar to our lawyer-
heroes in popular legal culture.

HEROES IN THE CLASSICS

     Emerson suggests that all mythology opens with demigods
whose "genius is paramount." The world is upheld by good men;
"they make the earth wholesome." The good is generative and makes
room for itself. The good man is "constructive, fertile, magnate,
inundating armies with his purpose." Right ethics are central and go
from his soul outward. They cause all things to "continually ascend."
The people delight in him and cannot see enough of him.7
     The hero, Thomas Carlyle reminds us in his 1840 lectures, is
the "living-light fountainhead" which enlightens the darkness of the
world, "a natural luminary of natural original insight of mankind and
heroic nobleness shining by the light of heaven," whose radiance in-
fects all souls.8 Joseph Campbell suggests that the hero steps forward
out of the life of the everyday when confronted with a challenge of

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supernatural dimensions, the solution to which has baffled and
troubled the community. After fears about his own capacity for
victory, he confronts evil and wins decisively. He returns to the
community with the capacity to bestow his boon on his fellow man.9
     In ancient Crete, King Minos had banished the Minotaur to
the labyrinth constructed by Daedalus. But the Minotaur required a
continuous supply of youths or maidens, making it necessary for
Crete to conquer new territories continuously lest the Minotaur devour
their own lands. Theseus arrives on the scene from Athens with the
Athenian youth and bewitches Ariadne, Minos's daughter. The slayer
of the Minotaur will need not only skill and courage, which Theseus
has, but also the ability to find his way out of the labyrinth. Ariadne
consults Daedalus who presents her with a skein of linen thread which
Theseus may fix at the entrance and unwind as he goes through the
maze. Theseus succeeds and, upon his return, takes Ariadne back to
Greece with him, ending Crete's primacy in the ancient world.
     Other examples abound. Prometheus ascended to the heavens,
stole fire from the gods, and descended. Jason sailed through the
Clashing Rocks into a sea of marvels, circumvented the dragon that
guarded the Golden Fleece, and returned with the fleece and the
power to wrest his rightful throne from a usurper. Aeneas went down
into the underworld, crossed the dreadful river of the dead, threw a
sop to the three-headed watchdog Cerberus, and conversed, at last,
with the shade of his dead father. All things were unfolded to him: the
destiny of souls, the destiny of Rome (which he was about to found),
and in what wise he might avoid or endure every burden. He returned
through the ivory gate to his work in the world.10
     While awaiting the outcome of the battle between good and
evil, the attention of the world appears focused upon the event. For
instance, when Moses climbed Mount Sinai to seek guidance after the
Jews left Egypt, "flashes of lightning, accompanied by an ever
swelling peal of horns moved the people with mighty fear and
trembling."11

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     The actions of our American lawyer-heroes surely fit the
mold. Lincoln steps out from among us and fashions a solution to the
problem of slavery that has troubled the land since its inception. His
solution of emancipation is courageous and unequivocal and changes
his people inextricably for the future. Atticus Finch heroically
confronts racism over false accusation at the risk of the safety of
himself and his family. His method of confrontation is original and
patterned to have maximal effect upon his own community. He risks
his life and forever changes the perceptions of his community.

THE MODERN MYTH

     The modem myth borrows from this tradition but portrays the
humanity of the lawyer in a more honest light. The conflict of values
paints a more ambivalent picture of the modem lawyer but ultimately
the heroic aspect wins out, not only in an external battle of good
versus evil, but also in an internal moral confrontation. Three recent
best-selling novels about the legal system contain common elements
about lawyers and courts that can be generalized into a popular myth
or culture with some degree of consistency.
     In Reasonable Doubt, by Philip Friedman,12 the central
character of the novel is Michael Ryan, an attorney. His son is
murdered at a party thrown by an art dealer for the purpose of
showing young artists' works to rich patrons, including Ryan's son,
Ed. At the party, Ed is publicly seduced by a young artist. This so
enrages his wife Jennifer that she grabs a platter of hors d'oeuvres and
throws it on the floor in the middle of the party. Ed and Jennifer leave
the party in a rage.
     About one hour later, Ed is found upstairs from the party,
dead, apparently from head wounds administered by a piece of
sculpture. His wife, who is independently a member of high society
primarily because of the wealth of her father, is charged with murder
and seeks her father-in-law Ryan's representation. After initial shock
and revulsion at the idea of defending a woman accused of murdering
his son, he agrees to the representation and spends the next six months
in trial preparation.

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     Ryan hires a female assistant, Kassia Miller. The two of them
work feverishly for fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, for the
next six months attempting to uncover what happened that night.
Protagonist Ryan is frequently racked with doubt about his client's in-
nocence and about whether he can continue with this, the most
difficult case of his illustrious career. Their investigation leads them to
conclude that the deceased was involved in numerous shady deals
involving Medicare fraud, pharmacies that accept false prescriptions,
and ultimately drug dealing. Apparently Ed had numerous other
enemies, any of whom could have committed the crime.
     The trial, covered by all of the newspapers, transfixes the
public. The district attorney himself tries the case because of its
publicity. The courtroom drama is intense and Friedman skillfully
brings the reader through the tactics of the courtroom warriors and
court rulings. After a highly dramatic presentation of the
prosecution's case, Ryan presents no defense and argues reasonable
doubt to the jury. After nine days of deliberation, the jury convicts
Jennifer of manslaughter.
     After the trial, Ryan continues his work with a forensic
bloodstain specialist who, after securing some missing photographs of
where the blood spots wound up in the room, can conclude decisively
that a person much taller than Jennifer had to have killed Ed. In
addition, Ryan finds a tape recording of a telephone conversation
between Ed and Jennifer's father that incriminates her father in the
crime. He confronts her father and solves the mystery. He moves to
set aside the verdict of guilty and is successful to the great adulation
of client and public. The novel closes with a love scene between Ryan
and Kassia.
     In Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow,13 Rusty Sabich, the
chief deputy county prosecutor, is tried for the murder of his
colleague and former lover. The crime occurs in the middle of a hotly
contested election campaign where the failure to discover the identity
of the perpetrator proves to be the undoing of Rusty's boss. The new
D.A., Della Guardia, an old enemy of Rusty's, immediately charges
the incredulous Rusty with murder. Rusty chooses the skillful Sandy

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Stem to defend him against the outrageous accusation. The
prosecution makes extensive investigation of the victim's body, fibers
taken from the rug of the place of the murder, and a glass left at the
scene of the crime, all of which appear certain to convict Rusty. The
trial again is highly publicized and well litigated, all lawyers doing an
excellent job. Stem uses his long experience in the local criminal
justice system to learn that Judge Lyttle, who is assigned to hear
Rusty's case, was involved in sex and corruption with the deceased. He
repeatedly alludes to the "13 file," which contains evidence of these
events in his cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses. This
causes the judge to dismiss the case. In the end, Rusty learns that his
wife actually committed the crime, but declines to prosecute her
because it would deprive his son of a mother. Again, the almost
certain conviction of an innocent man is averted by the knowledge
and resourcefulness of our hero, Stern.
     In The Burden of Proof,14 Turow continues the story of Sandy
Stern. The novel begins with Stern's discovery of the suicide of his
wife, Clara. He does not know why and is tormented by the lack of
insight. Stern slowly learns Clara's secrets and discovers, with other
women, the passion he and Clara had lost. While in mourning, Stern is
called upon to defend his brother-in-law, Dixon, the wealthy owner of
a commodity futures brokerage firm. Dixon has been in and out of
trouble for years, and now a beautiful U.S. attorney is investigating his
commodities firm for possible fraud.
     Stern's inquiries into his brother-in-law's business yield
answers he never expected to find. Not only is Stern able to pierce his
dead wife's veil of privacy, but he also comes to understand, the
awesome price he has paid for his own ambition. Stern's challenge
here is to control his sleazy and dishonest brother-in-law who is
constantly trying to hide evidence, and Stern ultimately must steal
evidence sought by the government in order to keep his brother-in-
law out of trouble.
     In the movie Class Action (1991), Maggie, the rare female
hero-protagonist, plays a perfect hero-lawyer role. She is vehemently
seeking partnership and talks her way onto the litigation team to

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defend the firm's largest client in an exploding gas tank case, in spite
of the fact that plaintiffs are represented by her famous father, played
by Gene Hackman. During the course of the representation, she learns
that warnings of a design consultant that the car was a time bomb on
wheels were purposefully ignored because a callback would cost more
than the cost of the projected wrongful death judgments. Her
immediate superior approved - indeed, recommended - the decision.
Her skillful father seeks documents relating to consultants' tests. She
insists on disclosure but her immediate superior withholds the
document. Confronted with a moral decision that she knows will
"kill" her chances for partnership, she discloses the identity of other
witnesses to the document to her father and then "kills" her
immediate superior by eliciting perjurious testimony from him that
the documents did not exist, after he was called to the stand by her
wily father. The perjurious testimony is then exposed by the witness
given by Maggie to her father. Thus, by blowing the whistle on her
superior, she breaks ranks with her firm and her client, requiring a
$100 million settlement, the probable disbarment of her immediate
supervisor, and her own exit from the firm.
     In each of these cases the lawyer-protagonists are confronted
with evil and immoral adversaries who appear very much to have the
upper hand. Doing what is right appears unusually difficult and
extremely risky to their well-being. After extensive self-examination,
each chooses the right path and succeeds in defeating the evil
adversary.
     The TV show "L.A. Law" has a whole stable of lawyer-
heroes in the law firm of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak, a
full service law firm with plush well-appointed L.A. offices and a
generally sympathetic cast of lawyers.
     Its fourteen million viewers are treated to some of the most
difficult and ambiguous legal issues of our day, including, for
example: the termination of the life support-system for a young
woman in a coma; the duty of a psychiatrist to warn the intended
victim of an apparently violent patient; toxic torts; capital punishment;
date rape; insider trading; whether a food company that has hired an

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Olympic gold medalist to promote its products can annul the contract
when the young man decides to reveal his homosexuality.15
     Top billing goes to Harry Hamlin for his portrayal of Michael
Kuzak. He is handsome, sexually attractive, intelligent, sensitive, well
dressed, rich, and a good lawyer. The firm serves its clients well and
prepares accordingly.
     Modem popular culture thus appears enamored of the lawyer
as hero. The lawyer works extensive hours with experts from all
disciplines, chasing down leads that initially appear futile, researches
complex questions of law and drafts papers for the court which the
court ponders. In the courtroom, his advocacy and cross-examination
are purposeful and usually successful. Judges listen to lawyers,
understand lawyers, and carry out the trial process in an efficient and
fair way. Lawyers stand for justice and truth and they achieve this
through diligent preparation and hard work, the product of which is
presented to juries in lengthy trials.
     In the recent television special "Separate but Equal," it is the
diligence, tenacity, and intelligence of Thurgood Marshall, played by
Sidney Poitier, that integrate the schools of the nation. Indeed,
perhaps it is the practice of law itself which is ennobling. Frank
Galvin, the protagonist in Barry Reed's The Verdict,16 played so ably
in the movie by Paul Newman, is anything but heroic until he is
presented with the case of a young mother who entered a Catholic
hospital to have a baby and came out a vegetable. The situation, the
client, and the law ennoble him and cause him to fight on for truth
and justice.

MORAL AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS

     Modem fiction writers continue to present their heroes with
difficult moral and ethical problems, just as their classical counterparts
did.
     For instance, in tile famous lecture in Anatomy of a Murder
(1959), James Stewart coaches his client into perjury to prove an

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insanity defense. Stewart appears to cross the line of zealous advocate
becoming instead a suborner of perjury. He has courageously
decided, however, that it would be unjust for Marion, who has killed
his wife's rapist, to face the death penalty.
     In Reasonable Doubt, protagonist Ryan faces a motion to
disqualify because his defense of the woman who is accused of killing
his son is filled with personal conflicts, especially if he concludes she
is guilty - which is quite unclear until the end of the book - and be-
cause it will have undue influence upon the jury. While legal ethics
appear to counsel against the representation, Ryan hangs on to his
hope in his client's innocence, follows his instincts, and finally find
the true murderer of his son.
     In Presumed Innocent, Sandy Stern skillfully plays on his
knowledge of the past impropriety of tile judge, as it involves the
deceased, and subtly blackmails the judge by threatening disclosure of
this information, thus causing the judge to dismiss the case against his
innocent defendant. In addition, one of Rusty's policemen friend
suppresses the evidence, namely the glass with Rusty's fingerprints on
it found at the scene of the murder. All, however, is for the laudable
goal of freeing an innocent man who appears dangerously close to
conviction.
     In The Burden of Proof, Sandy is confronted with Dixon's
continuous desire to suppress a crucial piece of evidence. This causes
Sandy, in a comic scene in which Sandy must lie himself out of
trouble, to break and enter his client's home and to steal the safe
containing evidence, lest it disappear.
     In Class Action, protagonist Maggie discloses crucial
information to the opposing side - represented by her father - again,
for the purpose of achieving ultimate justice in the case.
     Of course, "L.A. Law" hits upon an ethical issue in almost
every episode. One of its most common is conflict between the ethical
obligation of lawyers and the particular moral sensibilities of one of
the lawyer characters in the firm. Examples include: when Grace Van
Owen objected morally to her obligation to prosecute the gay man
who had killed his lover who was terminally ill with AIDS; or when
Victor Sufuentes advised his clients against accepting a generous
settlement offer from a hospital which he considered n vasectomy

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factory; or when Ann Kelsy forces her client to stop polluting the
city's water supply.
     Thus, the lawyer-heroes must often violate the law or the rules
of professional ethics to bring about good. Even Perry Mason
engaged in occasional breaking and entering to secure that crucial
piece of evidence.

THE ARENA OF THE COURT

     In lionizing the lawyer, popular culture sometimes lionizes the
courts. None of the learned arguments or subtle proofs of the
attomey-heroes would be worth much if the courts where they are
presented were not sophisticated enough to receive them. However,
judges, sitting in their church-like courtrooms in shining and beautiful
buildings, listen to the argumentation and work diligently to be fair
and to apply the law. The jury trial is the norm; lawyers study the
biographies of potential jurors and, after dramatic trials and illustrious
closing arguments, juries ponder their decisions for days.
     However, there is a good deal more equivocation about courts
than lawyers in popular culture. Often the courts are part of the
adversary of the attomey-hero; the judge at Sabich's trial, for
example, is a criminal.
     In the 1987 film Suspect, Cher plays a public defender
assigned to defend an innocent, dcaf, homeless man accused of
murder. She is successful despite the court system. She violates ethical
rules by working on the case with a juror and ultimately discovers that
the judge assigned to the case committed the crime.
     Likewise, in Jagged Edge (1985), Glenn Close plays the
lawyer who successfully represents Jeff Bridges, who is charged with
the brutal murder of his wife and her maid. In the end, however,
Bridges turns out to be a homicidal maniac who almost kills Close.
In Nuts (1987), Barbara Streisand plays a prostitute who is
charged with the murder of a customer, even though the killing was in
self-defense. Richard Dreyfus defends her and again uncovers a
corrupt system which is being manipulated by Streisand's father who
had abused her as a child.

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     In 12 Angry Men (1957), Henry Fonda plays the heroic role
of sole dissenting juror in a case where the defendant is a Hispanic
youth accused of killing his father. Fonda's dissent causes the other
jurors to reevaluate the evidence and their own assumptions about the
defendant. Ultimately, an innocent man is freed in a story which
portrays the judicial process - and ultimately the jury - as an
institution that requires a heroic juror in order to achieve justice.
     The Bonfire of the Vanities, written by Tom Wolfe,17 is a
review of the evils of New York and its criminal justice system. The
protagonist in Bonfire is non-lawyer Sherman McCoy, a rich bond
dealer in New York City, who is wrongfully accused of a hit-and-run
perpetrated by his mistress. The prosecutors, abetted by self-appointed
black leaders, knee-jerk liberals and radicals, and a scandal-
mongering press, portray the drug dealer victim to a credulous public
as an honor student that he is not.
     Wolfe's novel essentially trashes everything that it touches,
which includes the city of New York, judges, district attorneys, lawyers,
bond dealers, New York high society, politicians, black leaders, and so
forth. Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer is anything but heroic.
He eams $36,000 a year, lives in a cramped three and one-half room
apartment in Manhattan, and takes the subway to work in the Bronx.
The docket of cases he is assigned is a long list of black defendants
that plead out. As he comes to work one morning he observes the van
bringing "the chow" to the thirty-five criminal sessions of Bronx
Supreme Court:
Every year forty thousand people, forty thousand
incompetents, dimwits, alcoholics, psychopaths,
knockabouts . . . and people who could only be de-
scribed as stone evil, were arrested in the Bronx. Seven
thousand of them were indicted and arraigned, and
there they entered the maw of the criminal justice
system - right here - through the gateway into
Gibralter, where the vans were lined up.18
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     Ninety-eight percent are guilty and the caseload is so
overwhelming that they don't waste time with the marginal cases.
D.A.'s who are late for Judge Kovitsky's court "impede the
shoveling of chow into the gullet" of the system. On good days, when
the jurors deliberate during lunch, D.A.'s get free lunch. Kramer gets
roast beef with mustard - "the mustard in gelatinous sealed plastic
envelopes that he had to open with his teeth" - and his office at the
Bronx Courthouse is severely government issue. If there is one person
whom Wolfe lets off slightly easier than the rest it is Killian, McCoy's
defense attorney. At their first meeting Sherman finds it easy to talk to
Killian: "like a priest, his confessor, this dandy with a fighter's nose."
Killian has made numerous deposits in the "favor bank" and he's
therefore in a position to "make contracts" with people in the D.A.'s
office. Killian describes his alma mater, Yale Law School, as a
"terrific place for anything you want to do as long as it don't involve
people with sneakers, guns, dope, lust or sloth." The trial of Sherman
McCoy is a travesty of self-interest, but trusty Killian does his best
against insurmountable odds.
     Judge Richard A. Posner suggests that Bonfire is not great
literature because it does not alter the reader's understanding of law; it
merely describes it in a negative way. In the opinion of the learned
judge, true examples of great literature about law include Kafka's The
Trial, Melville's Billy Budd, Dickens's Bleak House, and
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.19 While these observations may or
may not be true, it is undeniable that these examples of popular legal
culture affect public perceptions.

REALITY

     The fact is, lawyers portrayed in the popular media are larger
than life. Real courts hold jury trials in less than one percent of the
cases. The practice of law is far less interesting than portrayed in
popular legal culture. In Friedman's Reasonable Doubt we have two
highly paid lawyers spending one hundred hours a week for twenty-
six weeks in preparation and trial. The legal fee, which would surely

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exceed $500,000, is irrelevant because the client's family has
unlimited personal resources. Likewise, the legal fee in Reversal of
Fortune and Burden of Proof would be far out of the reach of the
normal person. No law firm has ever had as many interesting cases as
McKenzie, Brackman, or as many sexy, interesting lawyers. Perry
Mason seemed to have the luxury of working on one case at a time.
     Lawyers, I suspect, are not more heroic than doctors or
business people or carpenters. Rarely are courts presided over with the
wisdom of the judges in "L.A. Law" or Class Action, but judges in
real life are not as corrupt as those portrayed in Presumed Innocent or
Suspect, either. If we are looking for realism, the wonderful
documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988) or Wambaugh's reality-
based The Onion Field,20 can supply us with that. Indeed, we can
expect books, movies, and docudramas on the celebrated Pamela
Smart case which may or may not mirror reality.
     It is certainly no criticism of the writers of fiction that their
scripts lack realism. Their response would surely be, "So what? The
script was a popular and financial success." Further, it might prove
difficult to create great dramatic tension out of a real estate closing or
the preparation of a will. The scriptwriter travels the world in search of
dramatic tension, moral ambiguity, and heroic characters. The
courtrooms they create are more like dramatic stages than real
courtrooms. Nor should it surprise us that the protagonists seem more
like Theseus than real lawyers. The purpose is the creation of dramatic
tension and entertainment, and since the days of the Greeks the
chosen vehicle has been the heroic archetype. The fact that we are the
source of all of this attention is certainly in our self interest. The
American Bar Association could not hire a more effective public
relations firm than the Hollywood of today. However, as students of
the legal profession and tile judiciary, we should be careful not to
confuse the real with the celluloid fantasy.

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ENDNOTES

* Professor of Law, Suffolk University.

1. Stewart Macaulay, "Popular Legal Culture: An Introduction," 
Yale Law Journal 98 (1989): 1547 (quoting Clifford Geertz, 
"The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of 
Man," in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books,
1973), 45).

2. Id. (quoting Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System," in 
Interpretation, 216).

3. Id., 1546 (quoting Geertz, "Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in 
Comparative Perspective," in Local Knowledge: Further Essays 
in Interpretative Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 
215).

4. 48 U.S. (7 How.) 1 (1849).

5. Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 
518 (1819).

6. Stephen V. Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster (Weston, Vt.: 
The Countryman Press, 1937), 14.

7. Ralph W. Emerson, Representative Men (Boston: Ticknor and 
Fields, 1864), 3-27.

8. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and 
the Heroic in History (New York, N.Y.: Crowell Co., n.d.), 6.

9. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd ed. 
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), 30.

10. Id.

11. 7 Exod. 19:3-5.

12. (New York: D. I. Fine, 1990).

13.. (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987).

14. (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990).

15. See Stephen Gillers, "Taking L.A. Law More 
Seriously," Yale Law Journal 98 (1989): 1608.

16. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980).

17. (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987).

18. Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (New York: Farrar, 
Straus Giroux, 1987), 40.

19. Richard A. Posner, "The Depiction of Law in The Bonfire of 
the Vanities," Yale Law Journal 98 (1989): 1654-55.

20. Joseph Wambaugh, The Onion Field (New York: 
Delacorte Press, 1973)