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LAWYERS GUNS MONEYLAWYERS GUNS MONEY Television news clips of lawyers protesting in the streets of Karachi and Lahore first drew my attention to the latest turmoil engulfing Pakistan. Protesting lawyers in two-piece, thin lapelled black suits, white shirts and ties. Protesting lawyers looking like John, Paul, George and Ringo. Or The Knack, depending on your era and/or musical persuasion. Having just come to grips with the idea of protesting orange robed Buddhist monks in Burma, also known as Mynnamar -- how be we split the difference? Burmamar? -- it was simply too much to now ask me to accept lawyers, taking to the streets, to battle `The Man’ like some neo-crypto-Woodstock loving hippies. Seriously? They must be up to something. Some sort of ambulance-chasing scheme where they bait the authorities into attacking them, imprisoning them, and inflicting harm on them only to turn around, represent themselves and claim exorbitant damages for pain and suffering. .. pause.. pause.. That’s me waiting as you insert your own lawyer joke here.. pause.. pause.. We do hate our lawyers. It seems as natural as loving puppies or not understanding algebra. It isn’t a recent phenomenon or mere passing fad either. Some two thousand years ago, Tacitus, in The Annals of Imperial Rome said, “No commodity was so publicly for sale as the perfidy of lawyers.” Thomas More, in his book, Utopia, bid, “As for lawyers, a class of men whose trade it is to manipulate cases and multiply quibbles, they wouldn't have them in the country,” as part of his quest for a perfect society. An odd sentiment from a man trained as a lawyer.. or maybe not. One thing’s for sure, Olde Thome could’ve used a better lawyer when Henry VIII put him on trial for treason. I personally don’t know anyone who’s been irreparably damaged dealing with a lawyer, including me who grew up with one as a father.* Of course, all of us have anecdotal evidence to the contrary, from a friend of a friend of a friend who got royally screwed by their lawyer. “Lawyers Are Rats” screamed the headline of a weekly magazine this summer although, these days, I’d turn to either a barrister or solicitor to watch my back or tell me the truth before a journalist. The thing about our legal system -- the adversarial form of British common law handed down to us -- is that there are winners and there are losers. Anyone who emerges victorious in court proceedings is less inclined to bitch about their lawyers’ tactics or fees than those coming out on the short end of a verdict. That works out to about 50%, if my thinking cap is functioning properly. The other half bears a grudge. Quite a dissatisfied constituency. Quite the pool from which to draw jokes. This adversarial system not only generates enormous enmity but it also makes for great drama. Poets, playwrights and novelists have mined the machinations that swirl around the courts of law since putting quill to paper. If art is truly a reflection of society, our libraries, stages (and later, screens large and small) must be filled with tales of black-hearted and be-wigged nefariousness in which lawyers routinely engage. Oddly enough, I cannot, off the top of my head, think of many classic lawyer villains in our popular culture. Incompetent attorneys, sure. The Simpsons’ Lionel Hutz or Henry Winkler’s sexually confused Bluth family lawyer, Barry Zuckerkorn in Arrested Development immediately spring to mind. But pure, unadulterated evil lawyers? OK, there’s one. Roy Cohn, but he doesn’t really count since he was an actual person, only brought to the public’s attention again by Al Pacino in the TV version of Angels in America. The fact of the matter is, fictional evil lawyers can’t hold a candle to their noble, pretend counterparts. Atticus Finch, fighting southern racism while raising his motherless children and humanely shooting rabid dogs, in To Kill a Mockingbird. Henry Drummond, wading through the mire of biblical literalism and backward superstition to strike a blow for rational thought, in Inherit the Wind. Yeah, yeah. I know. Based on a real person, Clarence Darrow, but since they went to the trouble of coming up with a new name, I can claim him as a fictitious character. Judging from our books and plays and movies, we may not be as antagonistic toward the lawyerly class as the derisive jokes and the press claim. More recent offerings suggest that we like our lawyers to be compromised but ultimately “good”. “Good” meaning doing the “right” thing. The “right” thing meaning the ability to honourably emerge from that amorphous grey zone where morality mixes it up with what is required, what is permissible. Michael Clayton brings to life the latest in that line of conscientiously dubious lawyers who are forced, cajoled, pushed up against their personal line in the sand until they must risk professional calamity to deliver justice. These aren’t “bad” characters, with no moral compass. As the firm’s “fixer”, Clayton does the bidding of well-paying clients who are the “bad” or evil ones, from your basic hit-and-runner to your moustache-twirling, cancer-causing agro-corporation. It’s not the lawyers who are dirty; those they represent have the blood on their hands. In a system where everyone is innocent until proven guilty, even the vilest, most reprehensible figures are entitled to due process. Lawyers are obligated to provide that. We judge lawyers’ moral fibre and intestinal fortitude by how far they’re willing to go to ‘protect’ their clients. Murder? Not so much. How about money-laundering and cocaine addiction, like Sean Penn’s Dave Kleinfeld in Carlito’s Way? Again, not comfortable with that. Remember Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) who buries a report that could’ve helped his psychopathic client beat a rape charge in the remake of Cape Fear? Now, things aren’t so clear-cut. Then there’s my personal favourite. .. and Justice For All. Al Pacino ballistically turns on his thuggish, rapist judge client in his opening statement, just not willing to defend a guilty man. Who’s the bad guy there, huh? (Your honour? A sidebar? I don’t know if, technically, an actor can Jump the Shark but if they can, this is where Pacino did so, diving fully into over-the-top, scene-chewery that he’s indulged in fairly regularly over the past 30 years or so. Thank you.)In conclusion, good people of the jury, as seen through the camera lens, our view of lawyers is conflicted. Sullied, money-grubbing and unprincipled when they stand up to defend an obvious criminal. Virtuous, civic-minded and noble when they agree to take on a case (preferably pro bono) for the innocent little guy. So to those Beatlemania looking lawyers in Pakistan, risking torture and imprisonment for their stance against a dictator who’s been meddling in the judiciary in order to extend his rule, we say, Fight On! In the immortal words of Arthur Kirkland: That man is guilty.. that man is a slime! He is a slime! If he's allowed to go free, then something really wrong is goin' on here!.. You're out of order! You're out of order! *For full and absolute disclosure, I also have a brother-in-law who’s a lawyer. More than a few acquaintances are lawyers. Hell, I’ll admit it, loud and proud: some of my best friends are lawyers.
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