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Tortured Souls: Unhappy Lawyers Viewed Through the Medium of Film
Abstract
Lawyers are unhappy. So bad is the situation that scholars have even asked, "Can one be a lawyer and a happy human being at the same time?" Culturally, the existence of unhappy lawyers is not an unknown phenomenon. Case in point: the portrayal of tortured attorneys through the medium of film. This Article focuses on nine such lawyers: Ned Racine, Michael Clayton, Frank Galvin, Reggie Love, Paul Biegler, Sam Bowden, Arthur Kirkland, Jan Schlichtmann, and Atticus Finch. Similarities between lawyers in reel life and real life quickly emerge. The legal profession should pay attention to these common struggles. Attorneys in film have much to teach. Their most lasting lessons point the way for the modern lawyer to reclaim a satisfying and fulfilling legal career. Through the movies, lawyers old and new can freshly discover the secrets for lasting success: doing what one loves, devoting oneself to a noble end, and refusing to compromise ethically. That great cinema contains enduring truths and insights should not be surprising. The best films help us to learn something more about ourselves. Learning without action, however, soon melts away. When trapped in unhappiness, it is the individual who must act and make choices consistent with that person's core values. Movies can rekindle our ideals. But only we can make those ideals a reality.
The idea of finding career passion troubles most people.
Deciding on a career and committing to it while maintaining
balance in the other areas of one's life is an arduous task. As
educators, we often admonish students that passion does not
always connect to high grade point averages (or high salaries).
However, as a student, one might have stumbled upon one's
passion but was too distracted to recognize it.
Therefore, as we see it, the key in any professional pursuit is
that one must enjoy what he does for a living. If one has a passion
for his career, he is at an advantage. If he considers his career
pursuit to be a true calling, that is even better.
What does it mean to have passion? The Merriam-Webster
dictionary defines passion as "a strong liking or desire for or
devotion to some activity, object, or concept."
Three recent films – Children of Men, V for Vendetta, and Minority Report – sound a warning call by painting stark and contrasting visions of life in the United States and Great Britain in the 21st century. Central to all three stories is the role of law as enforced by the state. Law’s importance to the narrative of film is nothing new. Because it has the power to both liberate and oppress, law presents a ready well of dramatic potential from which to draw inspiration. The movies studied here mine this potential well. The common fear that animates each of these works of art centers on the use of law as a tool of oppression. By projecting this future, the filmmakers hope to teach us something about ourselves in the present. Do they succeed?This Article attempts to answer this question by examining the vision of law presented in the three films. The collective conclusions of the movies strike a pessimistic chord: in the future, the law will be dead. I offer critiques and counter-critiques of this prevailing vision. But no matter the reliability of film’s predictions about what lies ahead, the existence of the films is important in its own right. Criticism need not be accurate to be powerful. Even if darkness is not on the horizon, free societies would do well to periodically remind themselves of what darkness looks like.
This article argues that professional responsibilities arise within the connectionist web of laws, ethics, and personal conscience. Lawyers, judges, and law professors must not renounce personal responsibility in providing professional services. Willful reasoning derived from personal conscience alone, however, cannot be the driver of legitimate reasoning. Legal professionals must pursue cognitive coherence by connecting personal responsibility with the knowledge of laws and ethics. Lawyers must not accept the dissociation paradigm that forces them to game the system or surrender personal responsibility in serving clients. Judges must not accept the dissociation paradigm that forces them to game legal reasoning or serve as conscience-free enforcers of laws. If legal reasoning derived from binding legal sources yields multiple solutions to a legal problem, judges must choose the solution most compatible with their conscience. Of all legal professionals, law professors are in the most privileged position to teach and write in the connectionist domain of laws, ethics, and personal conscience. A legal profession, which values legal professionals as fully integrated human beings rather than mere service-providers separated from their inner values, cannot owe rigid adherence to the dissociation paradigm.
The Internet allows citizens to comment on public affairs with an amplified and unfiltered voice, creating an open, community-based culture where robust debate flourishes. However, many of the ideals and practices of participatory culture clash with the traditional legal culture as it exists in the United States. This cultural conflict can be seen in emerging narratives, in the form of web blogs and lawyer emails that go “viral,” in which lawyers comment on the lack of humanism within big law firm hiring and firing practices; expose the alienating work environments experienced by low-level contract attorneys; or criticize judges who show hostility toward criminal defense attorneys. From a critical standpoint, these narratives tell the story of a broken legal profession, implicitly arguing that the liberal humanism that the profession supposedly embodies does not apply to all lawyers. These stories are, in effect, structural critiques of the profession. Nonetheless, these missives have the potential to run afoul of ethical rules and professional norms that prohibit attorneys from impugning the integrity of the judiciary and the legal profession. Because these narratives provide a valuable critique of the profession, however, ethical rules or professional norms should not operate to shut these stories down. As the democratic ideals inherent in participatory culture become more deeply embedded in our society, the legal profession should also evolve and embrace a more pluralistic and unconstrained approach toward professionalism. Part I of this Article describes the characteristics of participatory culture relevant to the legal profession. Part II explores the emerging format of the online lawyer narrative and Part III analyzes the professionalism issues raised by these new narratives.
Rape cases reveal core conflicts in the space where evidence, law, and ethics intersect. Such conflicts include the tension between victim protection and the rights of the accused, the challenges attorneys face trying to negotiate the demands of sensitive and emotionally difficult cases, and the role of the law in counteracting stereotypes and bias.In this essay, I will begin by presenting the cultural milieu surrounding rape allegations, briefly reviewing attitudes towards perpetrators and victims. Next, I will attempt to capture the legal zeitgeist concerning rape, focusing on two recent phenomena: the reversal of false rape convictions based on DNA evidence and the advent of big-media rape trials involving various celebrities. After establishing this groundwork, I will turn to three separate issues of ethics and evidence that arise regularly in rape trials: (1) naming the victim, (2) shielding the victim's sexual history, and (3) civil settlements of rape charges. I will use the fairly recent case of Kobe Bryant, a famous basketball player accused of rape, to illustrate the evidence and ethical issues in all three of these discrete categories.My examination of the intersection between evidence law and ethics in rape trials demonstrates the limits of the law to effectuate practical change or to transcend, let alone improve, social attitudes. Many have observed that the legal solutions to problems inherent in rape trials, such as rape shield laws and rules against disclosing victims' names, have had only limited effect. Because the issues raised here implicate entrenched social attitudes, legal solutions are bound to be incomplete. Such beliefs are filtered through a legal system that is structured around competition and legal gamesmanship. Therefore, the defense lawyer's strategy must be understood within the context of social beliefs about rape as transmitted by the adversary system. We can limit evidence, but we cannot legislate attitudes, and playing upon prejudices, particularly those of the American juror, is the trial attorney's bread and butter. Therefore, to analyze the role of evidence and ethics in a rape trial, we must understand rape myths and the cultural baggage that comes with our notions of rape. Also, we must analyze assumptions about victims and perpetrators, men and women, and the chaste and the deviant.
at 909; Sarat, supra note 133, at 834 (explaining that, ideally, " lawyers' ethics go beyond strict adherence to professional rules " )
- Id
185 Id. at 909; Sarat, supra note 133, at 834 (explaining that, ideally, " lawyers' ethics
go beyond strict adherence to professional rules " ).
supra note 32, at 283 (observing that "associate attrition has become a major concern of firm managers who are losing associates in droves
- Fortney
Fortney, supra
note 32, at 283 (observing that "associate attrition has become a major concern of firm
managers who are losing associates in droves");
Not All Lawyers Are Equal: Difficulties That Plague Women and Women of Color
- M Theresa
- Syracuse L Beiner
- Rev
Theresa M. Beiner, Not All Lawyers Are Equal:
Difficulties That Plague Women and Women of Color, 58 SYRACUSE L. REV. 317, 32122 (2008)(documenting mass exodus of women from large law firms);