Atticus Finch, Where Are You? @thanerosenbaum @ABAJournal

Are films featuring lawyer-heroes out? Thane Rosenbaum thinks so. In a new essay for the ABA Journal, he says in part,

When it comes to movie heroes, the quintessential moral archetype has been Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. But he is not alone. Cinema has offered a virtual parade of eloquent charmers, jury-seducers of the first order. To name a few examples, there’s Paul Biegler (Anatomy of a Murder), Frank Galvin (The Verdict), Henry Drummond (Inherit the Wind), Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Witness for the Prosecution), Sandy Stern (Presumed Innocent) and Kathryn Murphy (The Accused)—among scores of other smooth courtroom specialists—all with a God complex and a clear conscience.
But judging from the films that have been released in this new millennium, the tropes that once dominated legal dramas have given way to an entirely new twist on the genre. Cinema has developed a newfound cynicism about the once-righteous trial attorney. Nowadays, perhaps consistent with our diminished faith in public institutions, the legal system and its practitioners, as depicted in movies, have been found wanting and guilty.

Read the entire essay here.