Vaughn on Michael Crichton's View of Lawyers

ICYMI:

Lea B. Vaughn, University of Washington School of Law, has published A Few Inconvenient Truths About Michael Crichton’s State of Fear: Lawyers, Causes and Science at 20 Seton Hall Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law 40 (2010). Here is the abstract.

Although Crichton has lost the battle regarding global warming, his characterization of lawyers and law practice remains unchallenged. This article challenges his damning portrait of lawyers as know-nothing, self-aggrandizing manipulators of various social and environmental causes. A more nuanced examination of “cause lawyering” reveals that lawyers are not part of a vast conspiracy to grab power through the causes for which many work; in fact, the rules of professional responsibility as well as the structure of “cause lawyering” limit their power and influence. Regardless, lawyers are nonetheless vital, and generally principled, participants in the debates and causes that inform environmental (and other scientific) policy-making in a democratic society.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A "Top Ten List" of Fictional Lawyers From @OllyJarviso

Olly Jarvis offers a list of his ten favorite fictional lawyers here. Do any on the list surprise you? I have to say that the choice of Edward G. Robinson's Victor Scott (Illegal) and Matthew Shardlake (C.D. Ransom's character from a sequence of popular novels) were choices I didn't expect.

Mr. Jarvis is the author of  two legal thrillers, Cut-Throat Defense (2016) and Death By Dangerous (2015). He practices criminal law in Manchester, England.

NBC Commissions Pilot Based On Marcia Clark's Novel "Blood Defense"

NBC has commissioned a pilot (and very likely a series) based on former L.A. prosecutor Marcia Clark's novel Blood Defense (Thomas and Mercer, 2016). Ms. Clark, Elizabeth Craft, and Sara Fain will co-write. The protagonist is criminal defense attorney Samantha Brinkman.  More here from The Hollywood Reporter.



 

Rapping on Atticus Finch as Legal Hero After "Go Set a Watchman"

Jonathan Rapping, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, is publishing It's a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird: The Need for Idealism in the Legal Profession in volume 114 of the Michigan Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch has served as a role model and inspiration for law students and lawyers for over fifty years. When Go Set a Watchmen was published last year, Finch's status as legal hero was threatened. In this essay I argue that Finch is a uniquely important role model to lawyers committed to social justice and that he has the ability to inspire attorneys seeking to live lives of purpose. We desperately need this inspiration in our profession. I conclude that in a profession that has lost its way we should continue to view Finch in this light and resist the temptation to destroy this fictional hero.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Empathy, Masculinity, and Atticus Finch

Richard H. McAdams, University of Chicago Law School, has published Empathy and Masculinity in Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird in American Guy: Masculinity in American Law and Literature 239-261 (Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum, Oxford University Press, 2014). Here is the abstract.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird illustrates a troubled relationship between lawyering and empathy and between empathy and masculinity. To begin, empathetic understanding has two sides: it can produce compassionate or altruistic behavior, but there is also a strategic value: a competitor who understands the thoughts and feelings of others is better able to anticipate an opponent's next move and stay one step ahead. Atticus Finch demonstrates both aspects of empathy: his ability to imagine the world from the perspective of others makes him a more compassionate and helpful father and neighbor, but also a more effective lawyer, better able to cross-examine adverse witnesses and to make arguments that (might) appeal to jurors. Atticus understands better than anyone else in Maycomb the tragic predicament of Mayella Ewell, but he uses his empathy to harm her, that is, to help his client Tom Robinson by exposing her as a liar. The irony is that the empathetic insight that makes Atticus the best person to cross-examine Mayella also makes him (among all those who believe she is lying) feel the most compassion for her. But the role of zealous advocate leaves limited room for showing compassion to one's adversary. Empathy connects with the novel’s focus on masculinity. The novel offers a new version of white manhood in the Jim Crow South. The conventional white southern male of the 1930s romanticized the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and adhered to a strict code of chivalry that required the use of violence to assuage insults to honor, particularly the honor of white southern women. According to this chivalric ideology, the greatest threat to white womanhood was black male predation, and the manly response was the lynching, not only of alleged black rapists but of other black men whose behavior seemed to question white supremacy. The novel offers Atticus as a male hero who rejects the white supremacist assumptions of lynching. Less obvious are the tools the novel uses to draw our attention to the concept of manhood and to invert its standard meaning. Atticus' courage is nonviolent, which the novel contrasts with cowardly violence; Atticus fights for a lost cause that is not the Confederacy, but its victim; and Atticus acts valiantly by protecting an innocent black man from the accusation of a white woman. Southern chivalry is turned on its head. The connection to empathy is that Atticus' sense of empathy is one of the key ways in which he systematically violates period expectations for masculinity.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Supreme Court Justices In Pop Culture

Slate columnist Dahlia Lithwick and her guests discuss the suddenly expanding cottage industry of biopics and other entertainment focusing on Supreme Court Justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, on episode 18 of Slate's podcast Amicus. More here.

But interest in the Justices, or in the Supreme Court generally, as fodder for pop images, isn't new. Consider John Grisham's thriller The Pelican Brief (1992; filmed 1993 with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington). The Justices turn up in scenes from The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Recount (2008), and Gideon's Trumpet (1980), as well as any number of other films. At least two scholars, Maxwell Bloomfield, and Laura Ray, have examined the image of the Justices in pop culture; their work is quite instructive. Cites below.


Maxwell Bloomfield, The Supreme Court in American Popular Culture, 4 Journal of American Culture 1 (Winter 1981).

Laura Ray, Judicial Fictions: Images of Supreme Court Justices in the Novel, Drama, and Film, 39 Arizona Law Review 151 (1997).

More Top Ten Lawyer Films, From a Spanish Scholar

A list of top ten lawyer films from lawyer/scholar José Santiago Yanes Pérez. Some are US films, for which he has given the Spanish title, some are Spanish films, and some are films made in other countries. A very interesting and thought-provoking mix. He also has results of a top ten survey here.

From Inside Bars To Sitting for the Bar

From The Hollywood Reporter: NBC has ordered up a script of Shon Hopwood's memoir Law Man from Carol Mendelsohn and the result may be headed for the small screen. In his colorful youth, Mr. Hopwood was a bank robber. After jail time, and redemption, he finished up law school and will be clerking for a judge on the D.C. Circuit.

Listen to an interview with Mr. Hopwood here on NPR. More here from the Huffington Post.

"Suits" Returns For a Fourth Season

Suits, the USA legal drama, will be back on the USA network for a fourth season. More here from The Hollywood Reporter. The show, starring Gabriel Macht and Patrick J. Adams, features ethically challenged attorneys at a high profile firm who take on interesting cases.

Another TV Lawyer Drama

The tv series Betrayal, based on the Dutch series Overspel, debuted on ABC on September 29, 2013 in a lineup that includes lead-ins of Once Upon a Time and Revenge. The show features Hannah Ware as Sara Hanley, a photographer married to prosecutor Drew Stafford (Chris Johnson), who begins a torrid affair with attorney Jack McAllister (Stuart Townsend), in-house counsel for a powerful businessman. Fairly soon, there's guilt, then murder, then conflict as Sara's husband and her lover clash in the courtroom.

Henry Thomas (remember him as the adorable Elliott in E.T.?) is all grown up as the son of businessman Thatcher Karsten, who's played by the wonderful James Cromwell (Farmer Hoggett in Babe). Others in this show include Wendy Moniz as Elaine McAllister, Jack's wife and Thatcher Karsten's daughter, Elizabeth McLaughlin as Valerie McAllister, Jack and Elaine's daughter, and Braeden Lemasters as Victor McAllister, Jack and Elaine's son.

Franklin & Bash Will Return For Another Season

TNT has renewed the legal series Franklin & Bash for a new season (its fourth). The show, which stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer, features two lawyers who delight in breaking the rules in order to win their cases.

How Many Law Professors Does It Take To....

James A. Lynch and Hershy H. Friedman, both of the Department of Finance and Business Management, Brooklyn College, have published Using Lawyer Jokes to Teach Business Ethics: A Course Module. Here is the abstract.

Most of us will agree that the legal profession gets little respect in the United States. There are scores of websites dedicated to lawyer jokes and almost all the humor is negative. Indeed, the humor is not only negative but is often is filled with hate and anger towards attorneys. In many of the jokes, it is clear that the only good lawyer is one who is dead. For example, try this joke with any other profession and it does not work. “What do you call 5000 dead________ at the bottom of the ocean? A good start!” It only works with lawyers. Why are lawyers so hated? One doubts that there is any other profession that has resulted in so many vicious jokes. This paper discusses how lawyer jokes can be used to teach the importance of ethics. Scores of lawyer jokes are provided for educators who teach business law or ethics to use in the classroom. 

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Any other profession that is quite so hated? Well, maybe not, although I think used car salespeople, the insurance industry, and Congress are right up there. (And I would point out that some people make really nasty jokes about putting an end to cats, which they do not do about dogs, except perhaps particular breeds). What's your favorite lawyer joke? 

Comparative Popular Culture Images of Lawyers

Lorin Geitner, Claremont Graduate University, has published Social Architecture and the Law: Law, Through the Lens of Religion. Here is the abstract.

How can we account for the differing popular images of attorney in various countries? One way of doing so may be to bring a paradigm developed in religious studies to examine the most publically accessible and prototypical venue for attorneys, the courtroom. Specifically, applying the model of critical spatial studies developed by Lefebvre and Soja in order to examine religious ritual space to bear on a different kind of ritual space, the courtroom, its structure, organization, and use may illuminate both societal understandings of how the law relates to the citizen, but also inform the differing perception and status of lawyers in the United States, Britain, and China.

 Download the full text of the paper from SSRN at the link.

On Any Wednesday

Bloomberg Law has launched a new video series, Stealth Lawyers, which features attorneys who have found new and different ways to use their law degrees away from the courtroom and the conference table. Ed Adams is in charge of the series, which features such entrepreneurs as lawyer turned baker Warren Brown of CakeLove and attorney/crossword puzzle creator Will Shortz, and historical figures such as Vladimir Lenin and Francis Scott Key. New videos make their appearance on Wednesdays.

Pop culture lawyers who wander off in other directions (but still make use of their law degrees) include Fairly Legal's Kate Reed (she's no longer an attorney, but a mediator still attached to her late father's law practice), and Linda O. Johnston's Kendra Ballantyne (formerly an associate at a white shoe L.A. firm, now a pet sitter, even though she's been rehabilitated and could go back to practice). These mysteries are published by Berkley Press.

Mr. District Attorney

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University School of Law & The Green Bag has published The Pastiche Prosecutor: A Speculative Introduction to Mr. District Attorney at 15 The Green Bag 303 (Spring 2012). Here is the abstract.

There is just one small, long-out-of-print book devoted to the exploits of “Mr. District Attorney”: Mr. District Attorney on the Job (1941), the first chapter of which is printed below at pages 307-338. Nevertheless, to many Americans he is a familiar figure – the first great “ripped from the headlines” crime drama lawyer. If you were born before 1950, there is a good chance that as an impressionable youth you heard or saw Mr. District Attorney. His runs on radio (1939-53) and in comic books (1939-42, 1948-59) were long and successful; in the movies (1941-42, 1947) and on television (1951-52, 1954-55) less so. As a Founding Figure of lawyering in popular culture, Mr. District Attorney has been the subject of some study by modern scholars of law in society, and he will probably enjoy more attention in the future. One aspect of Mr. District Attorney that merits study is his provenance, because the source (or sources) of his character might shed light on the development of the fictional lawyer as action figure.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.