In This Issue: - Riverside County Bar Association

of lawyers. Lawyers are perceived to be engaged in a career
imbued with a public purpose of pursuing “justice,” but
also an exciting career that satisfies the private needs of
being well-paid and mentally challenged. And that is where
the depiction of the profession in the movies enters the
equation.
If cameras captured the daily monotony of the profession,
would there be a lawyer “bubble” or a lawyer shortage?
Would anyone – other than those with sleep disorders
– watch a two-year-long reality television series in which a
lawyer works on a large case and is filmed looking through
and organizing boxes of dusty documents, researching
and drafting briefs, and spending large portions of each
day talking on the telephone? And what would happen to
Nielsen ratings if the dramatic tension created by lawyers
solving a whodunit mystery or confronting a moral dilemma
was replaced by the parties reaching an uneventful
resolution of their two-year dispute?
For sure, more realistic movie depictions of who
lawyers are, what lawyers do, and how much lawyers
earn would alter public perceptions of the profession. In
turn, law school enrollments likely would drop and adjust
to market forces. Job satisfaction among lawyers might
increase as the daily reality of the job matched preconceived
job expectations.
But a more realistic depiction might also lessen the
ethics and empathy that lawyers bring to the table. As one
legal commentator put it, “We do learn to think ethically
and empathetically by reading or viewing other people’s
(and other professional[s’]) stories. Stories situate the
action, provide some arguable justifications for actions
taken, and provide the context in which the actor must
act.” 5 In other words, we are back to life imitating art.
Without such heroes as Atticus Finch, it might be just that
much harder to make the right moral choices.
And certainly, without Atticus and Perry, life – and the
law – would be less fun.
Abram S. Feuerstein is an Assistant United States Trustee
who supervises the Riverside District Office of the Office of the
United States Trustee. The United States Trustee Program is the
component of the U.S. Department of Justice that supervises
the administration of bankruptcy cases. The views expressed in
this article do not represent the views of the U.S. Department
of Justice, the Office of the United States Trustee, or the United
States Trustee, but belong solely to the author.
5 C. Menkel-Meadow, “Can They Do That? Legal Ethics in Popular
Culture: Of Characters and Acts” (2001) 48 UCLA L.Rev. 1305.
18 Riverside Lawyer, October 2013