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Volume 24, Number 2 (Winter 2000) reprinted by permission.Nova Law Review BAD LAWYERS IN THE MOVIES Michael Asimow* ** TABLE OF CONTENTS
The article asks whether there is any connection between these phenomena. It asserts that one connection is clear and obvious: the trend in filmed portrayals of lawyers accurately reflects public opinion. But the article also speculates that negative filmed images can lead public opinion as well as follow it. My hope is that this article will cause its readers to treat lawyer portrayals in film seriously and critically, both because such portrayals are an important social datum and because they have real world consequences.10 II. THE POPULAR PERCEPTION OF LAWYERS Even more significant, lawyers are doomed to be unloved because criminal practice is their most public function.14 As lawyers see it, justice requires that an accused person have the benefit of appropriate process, such as the reasonable doubt rule or the privilege against self incrimination.15 This perspective is not shared by most members of the public, especially when it comes to criminal law.16 Most people think that justice means finding the truth regardless of the adversarial system, procedural technicalities, statutory loopholes, police or prosecutorial misconduct, or lawyers’ tricks.17 Thus, our profession has never been loved, but in years past it was at least respected and sometimes admired.19 Today lawyers are more despised than they have ever been before. This is something we probably knew already from the prevalence of nasty lawyer jokes20 or talk shows, or from social and professional interactions with lay persons. The polling data proves that this dismal intuition is all too accurate.21 In its introduction to polling data released in 1997, the Harris Poll wrote:22 Recent Harris Polls have found that public attitudes to lawyers and law firms, which were already low, continue to get worse. Lawyers have seen a dramatic decline in their “prestige” which has fallen faster than that of any other occupation, over the last twenty years. Fewer people have confidence in law firms than in any of the major institutions measured by Harris including the Congress, organized labor, or the federal government. It is not a pretty picture. In 1977 over a third of the public (36%) believed that lawyers had “very great prestige.” Today, twenty years later, that has fallen to 19%.23 In other words, almost half of the people who accorded lawyers great prestige then do not do so today. No other occupation has fallen so sharply....24In the early 1990s, the American Bar Association commissioned a public opinion poll from the Peter D. Hart Research Organization.26 It indicated that overall, respondents gave lawyers a 40% favorability rating, while 34% of respondents gave them an unfavorable rating.27 This placed lawyers far below other professions, since the favorability rating for teachers In 1999, the ABA published results of a follow-up poll from M/A/R/C Research.30 It revealed that while 30% of respondents were extremely or very confident of the United States justice system, only 14% were extremely or very confident of lawyers.31 In contrast, 27% had slight or no confidence in the justice system but 42% had little or no confidence in lawyers. Law-yers were soundly beaten by state legislatures, prison systems, and the United States Congress; only the media came in behind lawyers.32 Thus, the public seems to have moderate confidence in its justice system but almost none in the lawyers who make that system function. The same survey also asked about public satisfaction with particular lawyer services they had purchased in the last five years.33 The satisfaction levels with transactional attorneys (real estate, contracts, or estate planning) were much higher than the satisfaction levels with litigating attorneys (family law, civil, or criminal disputes). According to the Gallup Poll, high percentages of respondents give pharmacists, clergy, dentists and doctors high or very high ratings for honesty and ethics.34 Between 1976 and 1985, 25–27% of respondents gave lawyers high or very high ratings. Then the figure started to slide, falling to 18% in 1988. After a bump upwards in 1989–1991, it fell back to 18% in To go out on a limb: I think lawyers are getting a bad rap.39 I believe that most lawyers (not all of them, of course) are decent, socially responsible people40 who work hard for their clients, successfully check government overreaching, take a lot of undeserved abuse, are pretty ethical most of the time, and do not earn inordinate amounts of money.41 Instead, they hew out a living in an extremely tough, competitive environment. In general, I believe (although I cannot prove) that most legal services, whether oriented to transactions, personal planning, or dispute-settlement, add value and that most of the things lawyers do are good for society. It may As to the negative public opinion polls, your attitude may be — who cares? Life for lawyers, judges and law professors goes on regardless of what the public thinks of the profession. Lawyers are accustomed to people not liking them much. It’s easy for lawyers to write off the polling data as misguided or inconsequential. However, I think we should care a lot about the venomously negative public perception of the profession.43 The harshly negative perception that lawyers or law students encounter constantly in their daily lives (“how can a nice person like you be a lawyer or law student?”) undoubtedly lowers self esteem.44 It causes lawyers to devalue the work they do, and diminishes their satisfaction in doing this work.45 Surely, it contributes to the widespread feelings of career dissatisfaction and stress among practicing lawyers.46 More broadly, doesn’t If clients and lawyers don’t or can’t trust other lawyers, the costs of legal services will rise because every informal agreement must be carefully documented and confirmed.47 In a transaction where there is no mutual trust, the documents must attempt to cover everything that could conceivably go wrong, every possibility for opportunism. If jurors assume that most of what the lawyers say to them is false or misleading, and if they generally hold the legal system in contempt, the process of dispensing justice through trials cannot function properly. Jurors may be more likely to refuse to serve, or might decide cases on personal whims rather than the evidence. This may be especially harmful to plaintiffs in personal injury cases, as well as to criminal defendants. The roots of the law and of law practice are deeply imbedded in the social, political, and economic institutions of a given society and a given community.48 Law is neither autonomous nor unchangeable. If people generally hate law and lawyers, this will be reflected in the laws that legislatures pass and the initiatives that voters enact. Thus, distrust of the judicial system has prompted enactment of draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Distrust of personal injury lawyers resulted in caps on the amount that can be recovered in medical malpractice cases. Ultimately, the public’s willingness to use the judicial system and their belief in the rule of law will decline if people hate and distrust the lawyers and judges who administer that law.49 Recently, former Governor Pete Wilson’s veto of funding legislation caused the California State Bar to suffer a complete meltdown.50 The programs for which the Bar was responsible collapsed, including lawyer discipline, reimbursement of defrauded clients, and continuing education.51 Over 500 people (including almost all of the professionals who conducted California’s exemplary State Bar Court system for disciplining errant lawyers) were laid off.52 Some people cheered but nobody except for a few lawyers seemed to think it mattered. Wilson said that vetoing the Bar bill was one of the most popular acts he had done as govenor.53 In American history, lawyers have always played a statesmanlike role. Traditionally, lawyers constituted a substantial percentage of the membership of legislatures or school boards; lawyers often served in important nonlegal policymaking positions.54 Writing in the 1830s, DeTocqueville said: “as the lawyers form the only enlightened class whom the people do not mistrust, they are naturally called upon to occupy most of the public stations.”55 More recently, Anthony Kronman has pointed out the historic role and responsibility of lawyers to serve as statesmen.56 Today, the number of lawyers elected to both the federal and state legislatures has plunged.57 In the present atmosphere, the historic role of lawyers as citizen-statesmen is in serious jeopardy. Now why has all this happened? What, exactly, has changed during the last two decades or so to cause the public to so detest lawyers? No one knows exactly what has caused the decline and unquestionably there are numerous causal factors. Everyone has his or her own theory about which of these causes is most or least significant. I suggest you raise the question next time you’re having dinner with friends and the conversation lags. You’ll get some unexpected answers, although the particular answers you get depend a lot on who is answering. I offer here a menu of causal agents for the declining image phenomenon. Some of these potential causal agents can be backed up with survey data, others are impressionistic. Some are fairly persuasive, some are not very persuasive, but all of them have been suggested (either in print or in discussions I've had) as being part of the public perception problem. a. Factors relating to the legal profession i. Rising incomes. Income of lawyers rose during this period.58 Some extremely high legal fees and law partnership incomes received considerable publicity. The astounding fees awarded to plaintiffs' lawyers in the cigarette litigation exacerbate the problem. Many people think that lawyers make far too much money compared to their social contribution. Others believe that lawyers pad their bills.59 As the public and many lawyers see it, a noble profession has been converted into a profit-making business like any other.60 ii. Increase in the number of lawyers and in amount of litigation. The number of lawyers increased rapidly during this period.61 People think that there are far too many lawyers.62 Moreover, the percentage of women lawyers increased rapidly; some resentment toward lawyers may really be resentment toward women working in what people consider a male profession. iii. Increased litigation. People perceive that the increased number of lawyers (together with increased litigiousness on the part of the public) triggered an increase in litigation of all sorts,63 especially frivolous litigation.64 The lawsuit brought by the woman scalded by McDonald's coffee is endlessly cited as an example.65 Whether these public beliefs about the litigation explosion are a myth66 or whether they are based on reality, they are widely held and powerfully influence public opinion about law, lawyers, and the legal system. b. Highly publicized trials. Particular lawyers did things the public perceived as bad. The culprits may have been the hordes of lawyers embroiled in Watergate.67 Perhaps it was Johnny Cochran or other lawyers and judges in the O.J. Simpson case or the lawyers in the Menendez, Abner Louima, or William Kennedy Smith cases. Perhaps it was independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Or perhaps it's Judge Judy.68 Saturation media coverage of sensational trials or investigations, as well as Court TV, brings dubious lawyer behavior directly into millions of living rooms. Irresponsible news analyses of those trials that oversimplifies them and treats them as entertainment or as gladiatorial combat worsens the problem.69 And the perceived lapses and shortcomings of individual lawyers are generalized onto the profession as a whole. c. Factors relating to changes in society i. Rise in rates of divorce, crime, bankruptcy. During the last couple of decades, the divorce rate,70 the crime rate,71 and the rate of personal bankruptcies72 all increased. As a result, more people came into contact with lawyers in negative and unhappy situations. ii. Increase in government regulation. A widespread popular belief is that there are too many laws and regulations and too many meddling regulators. Lawyers write the laws and regulations and help enforce them. Business people tend to make this argument quite vehemently.73 iii. People increasingly distrust institutions and power centers,74 particularly the government75 and the mass media.76 Lawyers and the legal profession are just one more big, powerful institution that the speaker perceives is pushing him around, doing a number on him, or trying to get into his wallet iv. Changes in mass communication. Fundamental changes in the media may have something to do with the trend. In particular, commentaries on the internet and radio talk and call-in shows include bitterly negative opinions about almost everything, certainly including lawyers. Then there's the fact that television news has become just one more form of entertainment,77 often treating court cases the same as sports events. d. Factors relating to the litigation process People perceive that the costs, delays, and complexity of litigation have all worsened. They think that attorneys act less ethically than they used to.78 Discovery seems more costly, unpleasant and intrusive than ever.79 Lawyers more often act in an uncivil manner toward each other and toward litigants and witnesses, to the discredit of the profession.80 e. Lawyer advertising. Lawyer advertising increased exponentially during the 1980's.81 Television ads, in particular, seem to encourage people to invent phony personal injury claims, weasel out of their debts through personal bankruptcy, or escape the consequences of drunk driving.82 This sort of advertising strikes many people as extremely sleazy. f. Bad public relations Insurance companies and big business have engaged in a public relations campaign against personal injury lawyers and the pro-plaintiff doctrines of tort law. A number of conservative politicians, such as Dan Quayle, jumped on this issue. Sometimes the argument against plaintiffs' lawyers is generalized into a critique of the effect of products liability and other tort doctrines on economic growth or the formation of new enterprises. g. Negative stereotypes of lawyers as human beings. For good measure, lots of people you ask will describe lawyers (often based on their personal experiences or those of friends or family) as dishonest, unethical, greedy, boorish, inconsiderate people who are impossible to deal with.83 Each of these hypotheses concerning the declining image of lawyers contains a grain of truth. None of them is completely off base. Unpleasant events at which lawyers were present, such as divorce, bankruptcy, and criminal prosecutions, did increase noticeably during the 1980s. Certainly, some lawyers are bad professionals and bad people and a few of them have ridiculously large incomes. Law has become more of a business and less of a profession. There are some costly and inefficient regulatory systems manned by overzealous lawyers, and there probably are too many lawyers (at least too many lawyers competing for affluent clients) and too much litigation. Litigation (particularly the discovery process) has become nastier and more intrusive. Some lawyer television advertising is really awful. Probably each of these factors played a role in the precipitous drop of the profession's public image. The next section of the paper asks about the relationship of popular legal culture84 to the plummeting public esteem for lawyers. Is popular culture only a follower of public opinion or could it also be a leader? Undoubtedly, then, popular legal culture, follows and mirrors already existing public opinion. The stories in lawyer films are largely realistic in the sense that they reflect reality (although they often distort or exaggerate) as filmmakers and consumers perceive it.89 The fact that works of popular culture tend to reflect (at least in distorted form) popular attitudes, misconceptions, and myths is itself important and justifies the study of these works as a barometer of public opinion.90 Thus, the sharply negative portrayal of lawyers in the film of the last couple of decades is itself a phenomenon that justifies careful study as a form of social history. B. Popular Culture as a Leader of Public Opinion -- The Relevant Interpretive Community But can popular culture lead public opinion? Can it reinforce and intensify attitudes that were already present in weaker form, or create new attitudes that didn’t exist before? I think it can and does.91 In my opinion, the media of popular culture (particularly movies and television) are the most powerful and persuasive teachers that have ever existed, other than actual personal experience.92 If this isn’t so, advertisers are wasting tens of billions of dollars inserting little stories and resonant images into television commercials, and political candidates are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars selling images in political spot advertisements. I believe we are constantly forming opinions based on material we absorb from the popular culture that surrounds us.93 In our theater seats or our family rooms, we consume carefully written, highly entertaining dramatic material, brought to life by gifted directors and dramatized by superb actors. The stories are professionally produced with authentic-looking sets and music and lighting that intensifies the emotional impact of the material. We identify with the sympathetic characters and worry about their troubles, and we detest the unsympathetic ones.94 The images derived from pop culture are incredibly powerful and durable.95 As a thought experiment: were you compelled to endure a course in drivers’ education back in the tenth grade? If so, is there one thing you remember from those dreary days? If you’re like me (and a number of friends whom I asked about it), you remember the films. You know, the ones in which nice teenagers like yourself get pulped in horrible car crashes. Long after everything else has been forgotten, those images remain in an easily available memory archive. Or try this one if you’re under thirty-five or so: what was it like to fight in Vietnam? You can probably answer that question, but where did you get your information? Not from live television news like those of us who were old enough to be absorbing information from the news at the time of the Vietnam War. I’ll bet you got most of your information, not from some history course you took in high school or college or from friends or family who fought there, but from some of the many movies about Vietnam.96 Readers who are older should ask themselves the same question about what it was like to fight in World War II. Or ask yourself how you know what you think you know about private detectives, cowboys, or newspaper reporters. Assume a consumer of popular culture doesn’t know any lawyers very well, doesn’t read newspapers a lot, and doesn’t have much personal experience of the legal system. That person may well consume a substantial number of fictitious lawyer stories in films or television. I believe those stories teach the viewer what lawyers do, what kind of people they are, what they look like, and how the legal system actually functions. These images and emotional responses persist in memory long after the plot details are forgotten. The portrayals create knowledge and reality. Lawyers are like the kind of people practicing law that you’ve seen on the screen — in fact, lawyers are those people. If many of those portrayals are sharply and vividly negative and constantly repeated, that image becomes the viewer’s reality. And if these negative and enduring images are reinforced by radio talk-shows, television news, or by conversations with similarly ill-informed friends or relatives, or by some negative personal experience with a lawyer or the legal system, they become indelible.97 Even contact with real lawyers is unlikely to cancel them out.98 If a contact with a real lawyer is unfavorable or unpleasant, the experience fits right into and reinforces the negative image acquired from popular culture.99 Even if the experience with the real lawyer is positive, it is viewed as exceptional. In one branch of literary theory, the interpretation of text depends on the reader’s response (what he “does” to the text and what the text “does” to him), rather than analysis of the author’s intentions or of the text itself.100 In other words, interpretation takes place when the reader, for our purposes the viewer of a film or television show, interacts with the text, the film or television show. Under this critical approach, a viewer’s response is not completely random or subjective but instead tends to be constrained by the belief systems and experiences of an “interpretive community” of like-minded persons. The interpretive community that counts, for present purposes, is not the community inhabited by the likely consumers of this article — law professors, lawyers, law students, film theorists, or possibly filmmakers. Readers of this article are apt to discount the strongly negative portrayals of lawyers they see in film because the portrayal contradicts what they think they know from their own experience. Such readers can enjoy films like The Devil’s Advocate101 as amusing entertainment. Or they can criticize the films as poorly written, implausible or just absurd. But this crowd doesn’t take such films as serious accounts of reality. Instead, the relevant interpretive community is of the vast, and not so silent, majority — people who have only fragmentary, mostly erroneous, knowledge of what law is all about, of what lawyers are like and what they do, and of how the legal system actually works. These are people who are prepared to accept radically negative statements about law and lawyers when served up along with a good story. Thus, I believe, their likely interpretation of negative films about lawyers is that what a film has to say about the personalities and professional behaviors of the lawyers pictured in the film is basically truthful.102 C. The Cultivation Effect Psychologists have produced a large body of research concerning the so-called “cultivation effect.” This work assesses the influence of exposure to media on a consumer’s conception of social reality — the viewer’s store of information, beliefs and attitudes. Cultivation theorists contend that heavy television viewers entertain beliefs about the social world that are quite different from the beliefs of light viewers.103 Cultivation theory is vulnerable to the confounding argument that it confuses causality with correlation; it may be that people who watch a lot of television just happen to be the same people who entertain the beliefs in question. However, many of the newer studies are carefully designed to minimize the risk of this sort of error. I believe they sustain their hypotheses convincingly. Heavy television viewers believe in a “meaner” world than light viewers;104 heavy viewers believe there is a higher crime rate and there are far more police officers, lawyers, or prostitutes, and far more alcoholism or drug abuse, than do light viewers of television. Heavy viewers believe that people have more possessions and engage more frequently in behaviors associated with an affluent lifestyle than do light television watchers.105 Heavy viewers are more likely than light viewers to self-identify as politically “moderate” as opposed to liberal or conservative.106 Cognitive psychology researchers believe that there is a causal relationship, not merely a correlation, between belief formation and heavy television watching. Their explanation is derived from what they call a “heuristic processing model.”107 Heuristic reasoning consists of snap judgments based on rules of thumb, such as “lawyers are sleaze.” People tend to make this type of snap judgment when their involvement with making the judgment is relatively low or when they must decide quickly.108 For example, the process of answering a pollster’s questions calls for heuristic reasoning, since there is no penalty for giving a wrong answer.109 The authors of these studies sometimes use as an explanatory device the idea that the mind contains various bins in which items are deposited as they are learned. When people need to make a heuristic judgment, they extract the necessary information from these bins. Generally, the bins are accessed from the top down. As a result, the likelihood that a particular item will be pulled from the bins depends on both the frequency and recency of exposure. The more recent and the more frequent the exposure to a bit of information, the more likely that the item will be pulled up when needed. In addition, the more vivid a particular exposure to information, the more likely that the material will be accessed in making heuristic judgments — and well-edited television or film drama is likely to be very vivid. Information and attitudes gained from actual personal experience, even though that experience may have been random and untypical, is also likely to be accessed. In many cases people aren’t aware of how they acquired the information they’ve packaged into a heuristic judgment; thus they fail to consider that the information was drawn from fictitious material.110 In other words, people typically don’t “source discount” information derived from television for the fact that the information was derived from fiction, even though they are aware that televised drama does not necessarily supply reliable information.111 While most of the research on cultivation theory relates to television, it seems a fair assumption that the same psychological dynamics should apply to film as well. I believe that cultivation theory supports the hypothesis that frequent and recent exposure to vividly negative films about lawyers should increase the number of people who will make negative heuristic judgments about lawyers. D. Lawyer Portrayals on Television as Compared to Movies This article concentrates on lawyers in the movies, not those in dramatic television series. However, the way that lawyers are portrayed on television has implications for the hypothesis I’ve advanced. After all, far more people see lawyers on television series than see them in film; those who consume both television and film spend much more time watching television than going to the movies. And the portrayal of lawyers on television is, in general, more favorable than in film.112 Perry Mason and his modern-day clone Matlock continue to run in syndication in many major markets. These shows glorify lawyers to an absurd degree.113 L.A. Law was probably the most heavily watched recent lawyer series. The majority of the lawyers on that show were favorably portrayed,114 although some lawyers were quite negative. On current television, shows like The Practice, Judging Amy, and Law and Order present nuanced and, on balance, favorable portrayals of lawyers. Lawyers on these shows seem to be dedicated, competent professionals; sometimes they go overboard ethically and some of them seem to have fairly miserable personal lives. Relationship shows about lawyers such as Ally McBeal115 also portray some of the lawyers in a sympathetic light. Law and Order shows prosecutors favorably but often shows defense lawyers unfavorably. One well-controlled study of the effect of heavy watching of television shows about lawyers (mostly L.A. Law) assessed the opinions of television viewers about various dimensions of the attorney persona such as character, composure, physical attractiveness, power, presence, and sociability.116 It then contrasted the opinions of the L.A. Law viewers with those of attorneys and of the general public. For most of the dimensions, the television watchers’ opinion was much more favorable than that of the general public or of the attorneys.117 In short, watching L.A. Law made viewers like lawyers better than the general public likes them and better than lawyers like themselves. The same study concluded that heavy television watchers estimated the percentage of attorneys who are female and young as much higher than the estimates made by attorneys or by the general public and much higher than the actual proportions in the profession.118 In all cases, the results correlated positively with the amount of lawyer shows that people had watched.119 A different survey found that, of those who get information from television rather than newspapers, 46% gave lawyers a favorable rating and 28% unfavorable—considerably more favorable than the poll results generally.120 It is interesting to speculate why commercial television depicts lawyers more favorably than the majority of current commercial movies. In my view, a television series (as opposed to a feature film or a one-shot made for television movie) needs to feature at least some sympathetic characters that the audience can relate to and empathize with; otherwise, they won’t keep tuning in and won’t buy the products being advertised.121 That’s certainly the case with relationship shows like Ally McBeal, a character whom vast numbers of young professional women find empathetic. In short, I believe that dramatic television tends to be character-driven and requires at least some characters with whom mass audiences can empathize. In contrast, film tends to be more plot-driven and has less need for empathetic and positive characters.122 Current television shows about lawyers avoid goody-goody characterizations like that of Perry Mason. They attempt to strike a realistic note about the economics of law practice or the politics of the district attorney’s office. They depict the toll that law practice can take on the lives of lawyers and their friends or families. The shows try to face up to some of the moral and ethical dilemmas necessarily inherent in law practice (whether prosecution, criminal defense, or general practice). On the whole, however, these shows are not stridently negative. It seems likely that the negative impact of film on the public perception of lawyers is more than cancelled out by the positive portrayals of lawyers on television, given that the average popular culture consumer spends much more time watching dramatic television series than going to the movies (or seeing movies on television or on videotape). Moreover, people who do go to the movies are more likely to see blockbuster films, or action/adventure films or youth-oriented fare, as opposed to the relatively more serious (and less commercially successful) films in which lawyers typically play significant roles. Nevertheless, I do not believe that the impact of television versus film can be measured exclusively by comparing the amount of time spent in consuming the respective products. A couple of hours watching a movie in the theater has, I believe, a much greater impact than a couple of hours watching television. The reason is that the film experience is far more vivid; vividness, along with frequency and recency, is an important indicia of the cultivation effect.123 Ask yourself: Is the emotional experience of watching a film more intense when you see it in the theater or when you see the same film on television or on your VCR? Most people would say, I believe, that the emotional impact of seeing a film in the theater, on the big screen, is much greater than seeing it on television. And ask yourself this: If you saw a film six months ago that you liked or disliked, can you remember the story now? And how does that compare with the recall of a program that you saw on a dramatic television series six months ago and happened to like or dislike? Most people, I venture to say, recall the movie better. Comparing the movie and television experiences: You make a conscious and planned decision when you leave your home to go see a film in the theater; you pay attention to the schedule so you won’t arrive in the middle. In contrast, the choice of a television program is often impulsive and dictated by one’s mood or the amount of leisure time that happens to be available.124 Unless you’re a real movie fanatic, you go to the movies less frequently than you watch television, so a trip to the theater may become a memorable rather than a routine event. There are no distractions while seeing a movie (assuming the people around you keep quiet and you’ve turned off your cell phone); distractions abound while watching television, particularly phone calls and the constant interruption of commercials. You part with a significant amount of money to buy a movie ticket (and perhaps hire a babysitter and pay to park the car); the marginal cost of watching television is zero. Film-going is for most people a social experience that’s done with friends and family; that alone makes it a more memorable event than routinely watching television. In addition, one sees a film as part of a large audience, all reacting emotionally to the same material. We laugh harder at comedies or cry more at tear jerkers when the room is full of other people laughing or weeping than when we see the same material on television by ourselves.125 All this is likely to enhance the vividness of seeing a film in the theater.126 This dose of vividness makes the film easier to recall, and thus more accessible for purposes of making heuristic judgments, than a television show. A number of studies in the psychology and communications literature validate these intuitions. For example, it is well established that the intensity of response to material presented on larger television screens is greater than material presented on smaller television screens.127 Viewers perceive that what they see on big screens is more likely to be realistic and truthful than what they see on small screens.128 They also feel more like they are actual participants in events, rather than mere passive observers, as screen size is increased and as the proportion of the viewer’s visual field taken up by the image increases.129 Although these studies are mostly confined to television, it should follow that the vividness of seeing material on a movie screen (even a shrunken one in the local multiplex) is vastly greater than that of seeing it on a television screen.130 Some studies indicate that negative material is more arousing and better recalled than positive material, which should also enhance the effect of the negative lawyer portrayals film vis a vis the positive ones on television.131 Sadly, it seems clear that a political candidate gets more bang for the buck from a nasty, negative television commercial about the opponent than a positive piece about him or herself. It has also been suggested that images are more likely to be recalled if they are distinctive, that is different from the information the viewer is accustomed to receiving.132 Thus a few negative images of lawyers in the movies might be perceived quite intensely when viewers are accustomed to seeing more positive images of lawyers on television. For these reasons, I believe that the positive images of lawyers on television do not swamp the negative images of lawyers in dramatic film. Film is an extraordinarily powerful tool for influencing heuristic reasoning, considerably stronger than televised dramatic series. Thus, film and television have worked at cross purposes during the last two decades, with television casting a positive influence on public opinion of lawyers, and movies casting a negative influence. Probably, the net effect was positive, given that people consume so much more television than film; but it also seems likely that the negative films partly cancelled out that positive impact. If the negative films had not been made, public opinion might not have turned as sharply negative toward lawyers as it did. And a final, perhaps unnecessary caution: As previously noted, there were many factors at work during the last two decades that tended to depress the public’s perception of lawyers.133 Probably separately, and certainly together, these factors were more powerful than the effect of either film or television in affecting public opinion. A. Methodological Issues This project presents some serious methodological problems that I would like to address here. My assertions are based on critical judgments about the personal and professional characteristics of lawyers in film.136 I have classified a character as negative if information furnished about the character in the film suggests to me that I would not want this individual as a friend or as my lawyer. Ideally, at least, I’d like my friends to be warm, loyal, considerate, reasonably cheerful people who treat their families and coworkers well and have no major character flaws, major bad habits, or bad personal ethics. I want my lawyer to be competent, ethical, and devoted to assisting me with my legal problems.137 If I wanted a character both as my friend and as my lawyer, I classified the character as positive. When films had several lawyers, more or less balanced between positive and negative, I classified the film as mixed. This analytical method is problematic for many reasons. The challenge was to come up with a measuring scale that enabled me to make a binary judgment about lawyers in an array of hundreds of films united only by the fact that they contain one or more significant lawyer roles. Some of these movies are about law and the legal system, such as courtroom films. These films often furnish little information about what the lawyer is like as a human being. Other films are not about law at all but simply include lawyers as dramatic characters. These films often furnish little information about what the lawyer is like as a professional. Some films did not offer enough personal or professional information to make a judgment and I excluded those films from the survey. Asking the friend/lawyer question permits me to test and classify both law and non-law films that have lawyer characters. It also permits me to grapple with the fundamental question to which this article is addressed: How would a member of the general public view lawyers if his or her only source of information on the subject came from the movies? The subjectivity of the standard is a serious methodological problem because it is wholly a function of my personal critical judgment.138 Obviously, these are judgments based on my personal opinions and experiences.139 You have a different set of opinions and life experiences and you probably represent a different generation than mine (and possibly different education, gender, race, or class). Moreover, each of us is imposing our current personal and professional standard on films made many years ago, when people might have held views about the appropriate conduct of lawyers, or about personal morality, that are different than those held today. In short, I situate this work within the broader category of narrative scholarship in which the author draws on his or her own experiences or other anecdotal data in formulating or testing hypotheses.140 Even if we have the same standards for picking our friends and lawyers,141 you may well strike a balance of the good and bad points of a nuanced character that is different from mine. Necessarily, forcing a nuanced character into a positive/negative slot is arbitrary.142 A particular problem is presented by characters who describe an arc, changing from bad to good in the course of the film; I tend to classify these characters as bad,143 but you may disagree. Indeed, you might argue that most heroic characters are required by the conventions of narrative to overcome some personal flaw. Certainly, it’s true that most of the “good” lawyers in my array have at least some negative character traits or else they would be rather uninteresting as dramatic characters. The difference is obviously one of degree and, once again, we may well disagree about where the line should be drawn. You might come up with an entirely different response to the question of whether you’d like the movie lawyer as your friend, since you may look for different personality characteristics in your friends than I do. Or you might come up with a different response to the question of whether you’d want to be a client of the lawyer in question. You may be either more or less sensitive than I am to a lawyer’s ethical flaws or behavior foibles. Indeed, my criteria for selecting a lawyer (that the individual be at least moderately respectful of ethical constraints) is probably different from most people’s. Most clients are indifferent to their lawyer’s ethics, except insofar as the ethical issue impacts them, such as the lawyer having a conflict of interest or charging unreasonable fees. A lot of people want their attorneys to act like junkyard dogs.144 The question about whether I’d want the person as my lawyer is really designed to give some purchase on the broader question of how this film portrayal would make an ordinary viewer (who, of course, is not a client) feel about lawyers as professionals. But here there is a further problem: I regard lawyers who betray their clients as bad lawyers and lawyers who capably and ethically represent unpleasant or disgusting clients as good lawyers. In all likelihood most viewers would disagree with me on both counts. The average person probably applauds lawyers who betray repellent clients145 or who break ethical rules right and left for attractive clients. However, the public probably dislikes lawyers who capably and ethically represent repellent clients. I can only hope that you will share enough of my critical judgments to make this project meaningful.146 Even if you reject the attempt to count positive and negative portrayals as an exercise that is meaningless, excessively subjective, or reductionist, I hope you will share my perception that there has been a sea change in the way lawyers are portrayed in films of the last twenty years or so. The narrative accounts in Parts B, C and D may help to persuade you. Another set of methodological issues concerns the choice of films. My conclusions are based on the study of 284 films,147 which either my research assistants or I were able to view.148 Simply generating a list of films with significant lawyer characters is itself a challenging project which I tried to address as systematically as possible.149 The sample is far from complete, because I have surely failed to identify many films with lawyer characters. Readers of this article are likely to be film fans and will undoubtedly come up with some I’ve overlooked.150 Many of the films I did identify were unavailable to be viewed (given reasonable constraints on time and resources) because they have never been released on video or shown on cable during the time frame of this research. Another criticism is that the films are equally weighted, regardless of whether they were smashes or disasters at the box office, classic cinema or instantly forgettable trash.151 With all that said, I nevertheless feel confident that I evaluated enough films to make defensible judgments about the way that lawyers have been portrayed in film from 1929 to date. Moreover, my methodology can be challenged because I excluded quite a few pictures that have lawyer characters. I excluded law students and law professors in their academic roles.152 I avoided films with plots set before the 20th Century153 and films set in foreign legal systems.154 As a concession to the shortness of life, I excluded films made before 1929,155 documentaries, and films made for television. I didn’t study westerns (where crooked lawyers often appear). Some gangster pictures (which often feature the traditional mouthpiece for the mob) and musicals or dance films are included, but my coverage of these genres is undoubtedly incomplete.156 Finally, I didn’t count films that provided too little information about the lawyer characters or films where lawyers were very minor characters.157 I also counted separately films that purport to be based on true stories.158 The reason for doing so is that quite a few such films were made in the 1980s and 1990s (far more than in previous decades).159 True stories are at least somewhat constrained by the actual historical facts and in many cases the true story was worth telling largely because some lawyers acted in a brave or noble fashion. By separating out the true stories, the trend toward negativity of lawyer portrayals in the fictitious stories stands out more clearly.160 So, after all this preliminary throat clearing, here is a summary of my critical evaluations of the lawyer character in 284 films arranged by decade:161
However, if the true stories are excluded, the relative weighting of positive and negative, especially in the 1980 and 1990 lawyer films, are considerably more negative.
Parts B, C, and D contain a narrative treatment of lawyer portrayals in film history. Part B considers pre-1970 films along with Hollywood self-censorship. Part C takes up the films of the 1970s. Part D considers the films of the 1980s and 1990s. I hope that readers who reject the methodology embodied in my binary positive/negative classification will nevertheless be persuaded of my basic thesis by the narratives that follow. B. Movie lawyers: 1929–1969 Filmmakers have produced countless movies about lawyers, dating back to the earliest days of film. Especially during the 1950s and 1960s, these images were seldom negative. In the Depression-era films of the 1930s and the cynical, film noir era of the 1940s, a significant number of negative portrayals appeared162 but positive portrayals easily predominated. In this section, I comment first on Hollywood’s self-censorship through the Production Code. I then select a couple of typical movies from each decade to serve as hopefully representative examples of the ways in which lawyers were portrayed during that decade. 1. The Production Code. For many decades, beginning in the 1920s and continuing until 1968, American films were subject to a regime of self-censorship.163 The industry reluctantly embraced self-censorship in order to head off federal, state and local regulation of movie content (a serious threat, since during most of this period films were not accorded First Amendment protection).164 Self-censorship also appeased various vocal critics such as the Catholic Church. The Hays Code was adopted in 1930; it sprouted teeth in 1934 when the Production Code Administration (PCA) acquired censorship powers over every film. Joseph I. Breen presided over the PCA for many years with great skill and zeal. No film could be distributed without a PCA seal.165 One possible explanation for the relatively benign treatment of lawyers from the 1930s to the 1960s is that the censors blocked the production of negative lawyer films. One of the precepts of the Hays Code was that “law — natural, divine, or human — shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.” Moreover, “special care” was to be exercised with respect to “titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers.”166 Because of the latter provision, it is likely that the Code caused prosecutors to be portrayed more favorably than they would otherwise have been.167 Most lawyer movies produced while the Code was in effect contained positive portrayals of lawyers. It is hard to say whether the Code had anything to do with that fact. One chronicler of the Code, writing in 1945, states that the PCA always tried to apply its principle of “compensating values”168 to the portrayal of lawyers: bad or unethical lawyers had to be punished so that the audience would believe that “the wrong lawyer was wrong and the right lawyer was right.”169 This guideline did not require that films show good lawyers, however; it merely required that bad lawyers (like criminals or loose women) be appropriately punished in the end.170 In several instances of post-1934 negative lawyer movies, the Code Office objected to numerous aspects of the film but did not mention the negative attorney portrayals.171 Of the eleven negative lawyer movies in the 1930s, six postdated the creation of the PCA in 1934, two were made in 1934, and three predated 1934. On the other hand, several pre-Code negative lawyer films were remade after the Code came into effect. The negative lawyer portrayals are toned down.172 This suggests that the PCA may have pushed filmmakers in the direction of less negative lawyer portrayals. On the whole, however, I don't believe that the Production Code had much to do with the largely benign treatment of lawyers in film from the 1930s to the 1960s (other than the treatment of prosecutors). 2. The 1930s. One of the finest lawyer films ever made, Counsellor at Law,173 effectively captures the harsh and stressful nature of law practice. Lawyer George Simon (John Barrymore) came from a poverty-stricken background on the lower east side. Through brains, ambition and energy, he achieves a successful law practice and relative affluence. He has one foot in the immigrant Jewish culture he came from and the other foot in upper-class New York society. Simon cares deeply about his family, his clients, and his co-workers (both staff and lawyers). Yet Simon is no saint. He commits the occasional ethical lapse, and gets in trouble for it. He’s a complicated and enigmatic character; on balance I would like him to be my friend and my lawyer. Despite the general hostility toward professionals in Depression-era films,174 the majority of 1930s films present lawyers in a warm, benign way.175 Most of the exceptions occur in gangster films where lawyers sometimes appear as mouthpieces for the mob. At the end of the decade, the superb gangster epic The Roaring Twenties176 foregrounded a lawyer any mother would be proud of. The film follows the careers of a trio of World War I survivors. Lloyd Hart (played by Jeffrey Lynn) becomes a lawyer. The other two, Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) and George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) are partners in a bootlegging business and clients of Hart. Hart knows that his clients and war buddies are bootleggers, but his legal work strictly concerns the legitimate side of their business (running a taxicab fleet). When he finds out how violent the bootlegging business has become, he bails out. Ultimately he becomes a crusading district attorney and starts prosecuting gangsters, including Hally. Hart also rescues Bartlett’s ingenue girlfriend Jean from a life of sin. This was the typical way lawyers were shown in the old days — honest, brave, and noble. 3. The 1940s. Many films of the 1940s cast lawyers in a favorable light. One of the best is the great comedy Adam’s Rib,177 which contains subtle and nuanced lawyer personalities. Adam and Amanda Bonner are a married couple who oppose each other in court in a criminal case presenting interesting feminist issues. Adam (Spencer Tracy), the prosecutor, is a lovable curmudgeon who can’t quite handle the situation. He feels that Amanda is mocking the law that he reveres. Katherine Hepburn plays Amanda, the defense lawyer. She emerges as a wonderful character — a skillful, dedicated lawyer in a pro bono case, a loyal friend, a loving wife. Who wouldn’t like and respect lawyers if they were anything like the Bonners? In the 1940s, numerous movies in the film noir genre portrayed lawyers negatively. For example, in the noir classic Force of Evil,178 the protagonist is Joe Morse (John Garfield), a Wall Street lawyer who represents thugs involved in the numbers racket. Morse has crossed over from legally proper representation into deep involvement in his clients’ criminal and fraudulent activity. Yet Morse’s portrayal is rich and very complex; he takes tremendous risks to protect his downtrodden brother (who has a small time numbers business) and in the end he turns away from crime. 4. The 1950s. The classic film Anatomy of a Murder179 features small town lawyer Paul Biegler (James Stewart) who is largely unconcerned with money and does an outstanding job in representing his client in a murder case.180 He pushes the ethics envelope on client coaching a bit, but, at least in the eyes of most criminal lawyers, he stays within accepted limits. Biegler is a good friend and a fine employer (though a bit shaky on meeting his payroll). His opponent, the icy prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott), is equally committed and skillful — though he blunders in the end. And the judge is a dream.181 5. The 1960s. In this decade, some inspiring films like To Kill a Mockingbird182 or Inherit the Wind183 came close to nominating lawyers for sainthood. More realistic, but still highly positive, were numerous films like Cape Fear.184 In this film, Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is a fine lawyer and loving family man. Bowden is unjustly tormented by Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) against whom Bowden had testified as a witness many years before. The remake of Cape Fear185 contrasts sharply with its predecessor. In the remake, Bowden (Nick Nolte) had represented Cady (Robert DeNiro) in a rape case years before. Wanting to see his vicious client be convicted, Bowden unethically tanked the case by burying a report about the victim’s promiscuity. Moreover, in the remake, Bowden had been unfaithful to his wife on numerous occasions and was preparing to have another affair (or perhaps had already started it). The contrast between the two versions of the story speaks volumes about the way film lawyers were portrayed in the past and present.186 Another typical and noteworthy 1960s lawyer film is Town Without Pity,187 probably the best film about a rape trial ever made. Colonel Pakenham (E. G. Marshall) prosecutes four American soldiers accused of gang raping a German girl; Major Steve Garrett (Kirk Douglas) defends them. Garrett tries desperately to plea bargain the case, partly because rape is a capital offense, but also because he dreads the ordeal of a rape trial. Yet he does his job; his cross-examination of the victim demolishes her credibility. As in many rape prosecutions, the victim is put on trial and revictimized. Both attorneys seem to me to be good people, each doing what he is ethically obligated to do, however unpleasant the task. If one had to reduce the film lawyers from 1929 through the 1960s to a single prototype, that person would be a bit stuffy, emotionally shallow, perhaps a bit eccentric, but basically loyal and quite decent.188 Although the prototypical film lawyer didn’t lack normal human frailties, you’d probably want him189 as your friend. Professionally, the prototypical pre-1970 lawyer was skillful, devoted to his clients, and ethical. 6. Bad lawyers in pre-1970 films. A viewer of pre-1970 lawyer films encounters a few shysters and crooks along with the solid citizens, especially in film noirs of the 1940s or 1950s such as Force of Evil.190 My favorite is the notorious Billy Flynn in Roxie Hart,191 the exquisitely cynical comedy which inspired the immortal Kander and Ebb musical Chicago.192 Flynn (Adolph Menjou) specializes in representing women who have killed their husbands or lovers. He’s greedy, slippery, dishonest, and a complete phony. The Fortune Cookie193 features shyster personal injury lawyer Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau). A few films portrayed venal or politically motivated prosecutors194 and a fair number included mouthpieces for the mob.195 Infrequently, some lawyers came along who were just plain disgusting human beings.196 But these were atypical. C. Movie lawyers: the 1970s197 In the transitional decade of the 1970s, some lawyer portrayals were favorable, but a negative trend began to emerge. In The Candidate,198 for example, Bill McKay (Robert Redford) is a hardworking legal service lawyer who is dragooned into running for the Senate. Since he is given no chance to beat the incumbent, he’s allowed to say exactly what he thinks. Of course, the voters love it. A number of other early 1970s films also presented likeable, competent attorneys whom you’d want for friends despite their personal eccentricities. Recall Where’s Poppa199 featuring Gordon Hocheiser (George Segal) trying to get a life despite his psychotic mother, or Blume in Love in which Stephen Blume (Segal again), a caring Beverly Hills divorce lawyer, is trying to get his wife back. But negative lawyer portraits began to appear in the 1970s. In Carnal Knowledge201 Jack Nicholson plays Jonathan, a repulsive, misogynistic tax lawyer. A prominent character in the Godfather films (1972 and 1974)202 was Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), a wily and wholly criminalized consigliere. In the late 1970s, films like ...And Justice for All203 pointed the way toward the negativism that continues to the present day. D. Movie lawyers: 1980s and 1990s During the last two decades, a great many attorneys on the big screen have been bad people and bad professionals.204 They tend to be rude, crass, selfish, and greedy. They exercise poor judgment in sexual matters. Even if they are basically decent people, their personal lives are miserable; they drink too much and some are thoroughly burned out. If you’re looking for an honest, hard-working lawyer, look elsewhere; many of the post-1970 attorneys are unethical, disloyal, or incompetent. In addition, modern films consistently portray lawyers living in sumptuous homes and working in lavishly decorated offices. While I didn’t consider these displays of affluence and economic power as negative in themselves (presumably we don’t mind if our friends are rich and our lawyers are successful), many viewers cannot help but resent these reminders of the very high incomes many lawyers earn. I hasten to add that not every lawyer character of the past two decades is negative. Quite a few films presented favorable portraits.205 The majority of these were either true stories or issue-oriented films.206 True stories, obviously, are at least somewhat constrained by historic facts, and these films have mostly involved positive lawyer stories.207 In issue-oriented films, many of which are based on true stories, law and lawyers are used to make a social or political point,208 a traditional function of courtroom movies. In issue films, at least some of the lawyers must be favorably presented since their words and deeds are the vehicles for transmitting the message that the filmmaker wishes to convey. It is in the fictitious, non-issue, entertainment-oriented films, that lawyers take their biggest hits. So what’s wrong with these post-1980 lawyers we’ve called “bad people” or “bad professionals?” 1. Lawyers as Bad People a. Crudeness and bad manners. Martin Vail (Richard Gere) in Primal Fear209 is a good example of the sort of person you might not want as a friend. He is rude to the people who work for him, and is pushy and arrogant both in personal relationships and toward his clients.210 b. Miserable personal life. Kathleen Riley (Cher), the burned out public defender in Suspect,211 tells her boss that she has no personal life whatsoever. She’d like a baby but has no boyfriend. Hoodlums break her car window and snatch her jewelry. She hangs out with murderers and rapists and has come to like them. Worst of all, she hasn’t seen a movie in months. c. Bad spouse or parent. Walter Bridge (Paul Newman), in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,212 is a typically insufferable lawyer who treats his wife with cruelty and condescension. Over the years, he manages to stamp out any signs of any independence or individuality. He is unable to express emotions.213 Other lawyers cannot find the time or incentive to be even half-way decent parents214 or regularly cheat on their spouses.215 d. Substance abusers. Nowadays a lot of lawyers in film have serious substance abuse problems. Obviously Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) in The Verdict216 is the poster child for lawyerly alcoholism but he has plenty of company with Danny Snyder (Dustin Hoffman) in Sleepers217 or Lucien Wilbank (Donald Sutherland) in A Time to Kill.218 Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) in Carlito’s Way219 is a heavy-duty cocaine addict.220 e. Bad judgment in choice of sexual partners. Modern-day lawyers in film, particularly women, seem to have terrible judgment in choosing lovers. Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) in Jagged Edge221 is one of the worst offenders, leaping into bed with her client right in the middle of the case, but her colleagues are little better.222 Maggie Ward (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) gets into trouble when she has an affair with her supervising partner in Class Action. Laura Fischer (Charlotte Rampling) in The Verdict223 works as a sexual spy on her firm’s opponent Frank Galvin. In ...And Justice for All,224 Gail Packer (Christine Lahti) has an affair with Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino), even though she’s a member of the state bar ethics committee which is investigating Kirkland. 2. Lawyers as Bad Professionals a. All around badness. In Body Heat,225 attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt) is stupid, lazy, and greedy. He drinks too much. On the professional side, he’s been sued for malpractice a couple of times, is indifferent to his clients, and doesn’t care about ethics.226 He’s easily seduced by the sultry Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) and quickly enlisted in Matty’s plot to do away with her husband. Certainly, John Milton (Al Pacino) in The Devil’s Advocate227 is a competitor: he is bad in just about every way possible, as a lawyer and as a person — appropriately so since he’s The Devil. b. Complete crooks. In The Firm,228 an apparently respectable (though perhaps slightly over-aggressive) tax law firm turns out to be a bunch of vicious killers and a front for the mob.229 Dave Kleinfeld in Carlito’s Way230 is heavily engaged in money laundering, theft and murder.231 c. Disloyalty to clients. Film lawyers these days often sell out their clients. Maggie Ward goes over to the opposition in Class Action232 and Arthur Kirkland denounces his own client in his opening statement in ...And Justice for All.233 Ann Talbot (Jessica Lange) betrays her client in The Music Box,234 while prosecutor Michael Sullivan (Brad Pitt) deliberately throws his own case in Sleepers.235 Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) betrayed his rapist client in the remake of Cape Fear236 by burying a report about the victim’s promiscuity. Granted, each of these lawyers had pretty good reasons for turning on their own clients, but you just don’t do that. Dave Kleinfeld in Carlito’s Way237 steals a cool million from one of his clients, but he just needed the money to buy cocaine; an equal opportunity betrayer, Kleinfeld sells out his friends as well. d. Not caring about clients. In ...And Justice For All,238 most of the attorneys (other than Arthur Kirkland) couldn’t care less about their criminal law clients, whom they regard as vermin. In The Verdict,239 Frank Galvin ignored his big medical malpractice case until ten days before trial. In Sex, Lies and Videotape,240 John (Peter Gallagher) persistently ignores his most important client in order to meet his lover. e. Win at all costs. Big firm lawyers in The Verdict241 (James Mason), The Rainmaker242 (Jon Voight), Class Action243 (Donald Moffat), and Regarding Henry244 (Harrison Ford and his partners) stop at nothing to win, including destroying evidence, bugging opponents’ offices, or cheating in discovery. In a classic scene in The Verdict,245 defense lawyer Ed Concannon (Mason) explains that he’s not paid to do his best, he’s paid to win. No kidding: he pulls off a series of really dirty tricks, such as planting a sexual spy in the opposition’s camp and bribing plaintiff’s expert to disappear.246 f. Incompetence. Many of the post-1980 lawyers are just plain incompetent. Recall Frank Galvin in The Verdict247 who is helpless in dealing with evidence problems or Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) in The Rainmaker248 who has no clue about how to introduce direct testimony. Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) in My Cousin Vinny249 is sadly misinformed about criminal procedure and Ned Racine in Body Heat250 has been sued for malpractice several times. g. Ambulance chasers. Modern day film lawyers have developed creative ways to get business. Frank Galvin in The Verdict251 solicits clients at strangers’ funerals. Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) in The Sweet Hereafter252 turns up in town to personally solicit grieving plaintiffs right after a school bus accident has killed many of their children. The Rainmaker253 (Danny DeVito) is a primer on how to sign up accident victims in traction. h. Rude or disloyal toward own staff. Many modern movie lawyers treat their associates and staff members inconsiderately and downright rudely. In The Gingerbread Man,254 for example, Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) berates his staff unfairly.255 In Philadelphia,256 a big firm fires an associate because he has AIDS. The lawyers in The Firm257 kill lawyers who want to depart. i. Perjured testimony. Modern film lawyers don’t see any problem putting on knowingly perjured testimony as long as they don’t get caught. In Liar Liar,258 Fletcher Reede (Jim Carrey) is perfectly prepared to use knowingly perjured testimony, with the enthusiastic approbation of his superiors, until he is prevented from lying by a spell cast by his little boy.259 j. Bad prosecutors. Prosecutors are a particularly rum lot. District Attorney Abraham Weiss (F. Murray Abraham) in Bonfire of the Vanities260 cares only about politics; his assistant Jed Kramer (Saul Rubinek) focusses on career advancement and sex with a juror, not the irrelevant question of whether a defendant is guilty.261 k. Bad judges. The judges in Suspect262 (John Mahoney) and in …And Justice For All263 (John Forsythe) turn out to be the real criminals. A group of judges in Star Chamber264 organize an assassination squad to do in perps who got off on technicalities. Other judges seem crooked, as in Presumed Innocent265 (Paul Winfield); incredibly rude, as in Body of Evidence266 (Lillian Lehman); biased, as in A Civil Action267 (John Lithgow) or The Verdict (Milo O’Shea); or just downright nuts as in … And Justice for All268 (Jack Warden). these reasons, we should pay attention to and care about the way lawyers are shown in film. Besides its function in both following and perhaps leading the general public’s attitudes about law and lawyers, legal popular culture is important to lawyers for another reason: it teaches us as well as the public. In years past, film and television presented us with a set of lawyers who were decent people and honest, competent professionals — sometimes even heroes. In film, Atticus Finch, Paul Biegler, Clarence Darrow, Amanda Bonner, or Judge Dan Haywood served as wonderful role models for everyone in the profession from law students up to grizzled veterans. Today, it’s just the opposite. Most film lawyers are bad role models. Lawyers on the big screen are teaching lawyers and law students that uncivil and unethical behavior is rewarded in law practice.269 Law students are taught that they must be Rambo with a briefcase to be successful;270 perhaps young people who find that model attractive are disproportionately choosing legal careers. While there is little or nothing that we can do to alter the way lawyers are portrayed in popular culture,271 we can make use of film and television to better understand the fundamental problems besetting our profession. Do a lot of lawyers have alcohol or drug problems?272 Do many of them act in a rude, uncivil manner? Do they chase ambulances? Do they treat associates and staff members exploitatively? Do lawyers work too many hours, thus wrecking personal relationships? Are many of them deeply dissatisfied with their career choices?273 Is there a big firm, win-at-all-costs mentality?274 Yes, to all these questions. These are the realities of law practice at the millenium. We need to seriously address all of these problems and invest in finding solutions to them, whether or not we ever succeed in improving our public image. Thinking about the way that we’re portrayed in film can teach us a lot about ourselves. In this array, POS means that the lawyer characterization was viewed as positive while NEG means it was viewed as negative.277 MIXED means there were several lawyers in the film, some positive, some negative. TRUE means that the film was explicitly billed as based on real events and real people.278
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