Tax Lawyer's Blog

Apologies to Raymond Chandler, but best-movie lawyer lists are about as common as an annoyed look on a bank teller.

And what’s worse the lists are not even original: Almost all of them include Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, Frank Galvin of The Verdict, and Lt. Daniel Kaffee of A Few Good Men.

I loved those movies. Great entertainment, to be sure. 

But Atticus Finch got his obviously innocent client killed. Frank Galvin should have been permanently disbarred for his long history of neglecting client matters in favor of the flask. And Kaffee was a rookie Courtroom lawyer who was fortunate enough that the screenwriter gave him a Perry Mason moment:

Lt. Kaffee: Did you order the Code Red?

Col. Jessep: You’re damn right I did!

Ugh!

Here are my top 3 most underrated movie lawyers of all time:

Thomas More – A Man for All Seasons- Played by Paul Schofield

The late Paul Schofield won an Oscar for his portrayal of the sixteenth century Catholic martyr, and lawyer, Sir Thomas More.  As you watch More being railroaded by Thomas Cromwell, the bloat King’s top henchman, you marvel at his wit, his grace and his mastery of logic.

More, like To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch, knows the outcome of his case. Unlike Finch, however, it is More’s own neck that is on the line. To be sure, it took courage for Atticus Finch to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman, but that courage did not come within a lightyear of the courage it took Sir Thomas More to defy Henry VIII.

Here is Sir Thomas explaining to his daughter, Margaret, and his future son-in-law, William Roper, why he can’t arrest Richard Rich even though he knows Rich is about to falsely betray him:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

The next time you hear someone attack a lawyer for defending an unsavory client (savory clients aren’t often in need of lawyers), quote him that last sentence of More’s:

“I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”  

Paul Biegler – Anatomy of a Murder – Played by James Stewart 

This is a movie about cross-examination. There are no opening or closing arguments, just the relentless grilling of witnesses.

Stewart gets away with murder in the courtroom as do most celluloid lawyers, but his anger, impatience, and utter disdain for the pretty-boy lawyers for the prosecution never seem out of place. 

Biegler gets his client, the jealousy-enraged Lt. Manion, played slime-wondrously by Ben Gazzara, a verdict of “not-guilty be reason of temporary insanity.”

His cross-examination of the prosecution’s psychiatric expert is a thing of beauty:

Paul Biegler: Dr. Harcourt, psychiatry is an effort to probe into the dark undiscovered world of the mind – and in there the world might well be round or it could be square – your opinion could be wrong and Dr. Smith’s opinion could be right, isn’t that true?

Dr. Harcourt: I’d be a poor Doctor if I didn’t agree with that. But I believe my opinion to be right.

Biegler:  And good Doctor that you are you very carefully used the word believe, didn’t you?

Harcourt:  Yes.

Paul Biegler: Do you think it would have been less positive had you examined the defendant as Dr. Smith did?

Harcourt: I believe it would have helped to confirm my opinion.

Paul Biegler: But isn’t it possible that it might have caused you to change your opinion?

Harcourt: I don’t believe so.

Paul Biegler: Doctor, did you ask to make an examination of the defendant?

Harcourt: No sir.

Paul Biegler: So your opinion boils down to a snap judgment, doesn’t it?

Harcourt: No, it is as careful a judgment as the cirumstances permit.

Paul Biegler: Dr. Smith’s opinion was made under better circumstances, wasn’t it?

Harcourt: If you mean he was able to examine the man, yes.

Faced with the common dilemma of competing experts, Biegler has now made it likely that the jury will defer to the defendant’s expert, Dr. Smith, whom the prosecution’s expert, Dr. Harcourt, admits did the more thorough psychological examination of the defendant. 

Biegler might have won the case on the strength of this admission alone.

Jonathan Wilk - Compulsion – Played by Orson Welles

Compulsion is based on the infamous 1928 thrill-kill case of Leopold and Loeb.

Clarence Darrow was brought in by the defendants’ wealthy families to save the punk-narcissists, who had already confessed to the murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks, from the gallows.

And he did just that.

Orson Welles’ Jonathan Wilk is based on Darrow. Wilk’s closing argument, the whole of which is a general plea against the death penalty, is a paraphrase from Darrow’s anti-death penalty closing argument in the real case: 

“They say you can only get justice by shedding their last drop of blood. Isn’t a lifetime behind prison bars enough for this mad act? . . . [Y]ou hang these boys, it will mean that in this land of ours, a court of law could not help but bow down to public opinion.”

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