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53 New Eng. L. Rev. F. [i] (2018)

handle is hein.journals/remand53 and id is 1 raw text is: Brian Edmonds, Unscrupulous but Zealous Advocacy: Ethics Lessons from David E. Kelley's TV Lawyers, 53 New. Eng. L. Rev. F., 1 (2018) UNSCRUPULOUS BUT ZEALOUS ADVOCACY: ETHICS LESSONS FROM DAVID E. KELLEY'S TV LAWYERS ABSTRACT Throughout the history of the legal profession, lawyers have been subjected to high ethical and professional standards. Following the Watergate scandal, the legal profession renewed its focus on ensuring that lawyers behave ethically. Unfortunately, in spite of the promulgation of new ethical rules and requirements that law schools teach classes on legal ethics, public perception of the legal profession's ethical standards has remained consistently negative. By comparison, the fictional lawyers portrayed on television, who often commit many unethical acts, are held in much higher esteem by the American public. As a result of the near universal accessibility of law-themed television shows, new clients often come to a lawyer with unrealistic expectations. They expect their attorney to act like a television lawyer and demonstrate a willingness to cross ethical boundaries in the name of zealous advocacy. This creates a substantial problem: how do practicing attorneys maintain their ethical responsibilities when faced with a client who expects them to act like their favorite television lawyer? The answer comes from David E. Kelley. Kelley is the creator of The Practice, Ally McBeal, and Boston Legal, three of the most popular legal shows of all time. Despite certain inaccuracies within Kelley's television series, this Note proposes a method for learning and understanding the Model Rules of Professional Conduct using David E. Kelley's television series as the basis for a new analytical framework. The proposed method would require law students to watch specific scenes from Kelley's shows. After watching one or more scenes, the students would apply the appropriate ethical rules to determine whether the observed behavior would be an ethical violation. The final step in the proposed method would require the professor and students to engage in discussion about what they saw on screen and its potential impact on public perception of the legal profession. Students would then propose steps that can be taken in legal practice to help improve public opinion about the ethics of lawyers.

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