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48 UCLA L. Rev. 1305 (2000-2001)
Can They Do That - Legal Ethics in Popular Culture: Of Characters and Acts

handle is hein.journals/uclalr48 and id is 1321 raw text is: CAN THEY Do THAT? LEGAL ETHICS IN POPULAR CULTURE: OF CHARACTERS AND ACTS Carrie Menkel-Meadow This Essay describes the depiction of modern lawyers' professional ethics in literature, films, and television, and distinguishes between personal and professional character and specific acts. Depictions of lawyers in modern popular culture are more complex and nuanced than older treatments and allow law students, lawyers, and legal academics an opportunity to examine both ethical rule violations and micro behavioral choices, as well as character and more macro professional career choices and philosophies in a variety of con- texts and serialized plot, treatments. Treatments of professional ethics in more recent popular culture are also contrasted to more literary examinations of both lawyers' and other professionals' moral choices. Whether modern popular depictions of lawyers reveal more villains than heroes remains an interesting, if unanswerable question. Lawyers are more diverse in their demography and work settings, and the complexity of the sociology of ethical choices is now more often depicted than it was in the golden age of popular lawyer heroes. IN TRO DU CTIO N ........................................................................................................... 1305 I. O F C HARACTERS AND A CTS ............................................................................... 1312 II. LEGAL ETHICS CHARACTERS IN POPULAR CULTURE .......................................... 1315 III. THE ETHICS OF ACTS IN POPULAR CULTURE ...................................................... 1325 IV. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN POPULAR CULTURE .................................................... 1333 INTRODUCTION Consider these two thought experiments: First, what was your first image of a lawyer and where did it come from? Was the lawyer a good lawyer? A good person? Did the lawyer do good deeds or commit bad * Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Spring 2001; Chair, Georgetown-CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution Commission on Ethics and Standards in Alternative Dispute Resolution. Thanks to my research assistants, I. Glenn Cohen at Harvard and Meredith Weinberg at Georgetown, for excellent research assistance and up-to-date cultural criticism. Thanks to Michael Asimow, my former col- league and continuing friend, for organizing this symposium and providing many opportunities for conversations and scholarship about lawyers and law in popular culture. And special thanks to Robert Meadow, my partner in crime-watching (and lawyerly activities) and my lay-legal ethics expert who often asks, Can they do that? 1305

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