So over the holidays, Dad asked me which TV lawyer I’m turning into, perhaps as a way of checking in on my moral health. Is it Alan Shore, the rotten lawyer with a golden heart from Boston Legal? Or maybe cutthroat prosecutor Sebastian Stark.
My official response was that these shows are so far removed from actual practice that they cannot be trusted as accurate reference points for behavior.
Still, I have to admit that it could be useful to be able to step into these characters, if only to set aside one’s self – have that confidence-building out of body experience.
But which fictional lawyer would be right for me?
If I ever become a lawyer and would need to add a touch of theatricality to my practice, my vote is for Romo Lampkin, the “civil rights” lawyer from Battlestar Galactica. Okay, so he is an opportunistic, double-dealing, kleptomaniac who just might be crazy (he carries his dead wife’s cat in a gym bag wherever he goes). But look closer and you can see some virtues shining through the vices:
- Solid Advocacy – the guy’s willing to defend even the most vilified man in the galaxy, endangering his own life in the process, all for the price of a room with a window. That is a pretty admirable exercise of the advocacy function, and shows a deep-seated respect for fundamental rights.
- A Legal Realist – Lampkin does not view law and adjudication as cold procedure based on pure logic and immutable rules, but as a dynamic process that is partially constrained by politics and psychology.
- Capacity for Abstraction/Lateral Thinking (?) – Romo also has the tendency to compress his legal experience into “legal dynamics” that just cuts deep into truth, which really hints at a brilliant noggin’: “Lampkin’s First Rule of Legal Dynamics: When an irresistible force meets a movable object, stand aside and wait for the class action suit.”
Er. That’s all I can think of right now (I never claimed that he had a lot of good points). So yes, in the future, if I ever become a lawyer and manage to squeeze myself back into civil rights litigation – there will be no Earth-bound exemplar for me. Romo’s The Man.
Entries (RSS)