(As culled from FX’s, Damages starring Glenn Close, Ted Danson, and some girl who I vaguely recognized in 28 Weeks Later)

5.  Blood is too darn hard to get out.

The series starts with Ellen Parsons stumbling down the street covered in blood.  Is she a heroine, murderer, or unlucky 1st year associate… you have to wait about eight episodes to find out.   By the end of the pilot though, blood has been splashed, splattered and flung to every corner of the room with Pollack-esque enthusiasm.

4.  My Professional Responsibility class and the six grueling hours of studying for the MPRE would have been for naught.

Apparently, evidence tampering, witness availability, deposition etiquette, settlement negotiations, interrogation tactics, and MURDER were not dealt with before the Model Rules were instated by the ABA.  No wonder the lawyers, such as those portrayed by Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and Ray Fiske (Željko Ivanek) reacted uproariously to the Sarbanes-Oxley act… they saw it as an end to the wild merry-go-round of “screw the working class guy.”   On that note…

3.  I do not need to remove my heart.

While I understand the legal profession has no official code on moral responsibility, you would think that certain acts would set off your inner Jiminy Cricket.   Case-in-point… your boss calls you to work and there is opposing counsel lying on the floor with his brains decorating the wall.  You: (a) Run screaming from the room; (b) Call the cops; (c) Barely acknowledge the fact that you’ve seen so many messed up things in your first two months at your firm that this doesn’t phase you and you nod as your boss asks you to take and hide a redweld containing evidence pertinent to a pending case.

2.  I do not have to acknowledge that death is preferable to homosexuality

A subtle plot point that made me wonder where the producers were going with it… apparently having the world find out you may be gay… warrants you sucking on the end of a revolver.  Let’s hear it for the people at FX pushing the boundaries of homophobia!

1. I missed out on having the named partner of the firm I would have joined take a personal interest in me.

Oh to be a 3L so coveted that when I make the paralyzing decision to attend my sister’s wedding over the prestigious firm interview, the snubbed partner shows up at the wedding to offer me the job, no questions asked.   I wonder how many 3L’s saw this episode and regretted attending the slave market known as “early interview week.”  

Damages – now picked up for a second and third season – was generally entertaining, while relying a little too heavily on twists and turns arising out of bizarre dues ex machine.  Ultimately, Damages attempts to be a psycho-drama and any legal elements are no more than premises for propelling the show’s plot.  Fortunately for FX, Glenn Close’s performance more than carries the show, commanding the audience’s admiration; despite the distaste caused by her character.

Another great and entertaining Forum conversation with Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker, two Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning cast members from the iconic TV drama, L.A. Law. We showed many clips from the show, including the one where Ann and Stuart are married, which was sweet to revisit but also a reminder that Jill and Michael are, indeed, married in real life. Jill and Michael talked about the ways in which the show raised moral issues each week that were often too difficult for the legal system to resolve, and so the trials were very much close calls in which Americans debated the outcomes the morning after each episode aired. Apparently a new generation of lawyers were inspired to enter law school because of their weekly addiction to L.A. Law. Yet many lawyers would approach Jill and Michael to say that the show was unrealistic, that it did not depict lawyers engaged in their actual workdays. As we all know, lawsuits take years to resolve, and in most cases they settle or are resolved in ways that produce little in the way of closure or reconciliation. As Jill reminded us, there was something comforting in knowing that cases could be resolved and concluded in 54 minutes of television. Yet we discussed the ways in which the attorney-client privilege often leads to absurd if not crazy-making outcomes; the way in which lawyers could serve the public good as well as their client’s interests; the way lawyers sometimes can’t seem to leave their cases at the office–sometimes they anguish over them at home and can’t fall asleep because their conscience and convictions won’t allow them to do so; and the way in which L.A. Law humanized the domestic lives of lawyers and made them complex and interesting people in addition to being dynamic crusaders on behalf of their clients. Michael revealed that he wanted to be a lawyer when he was young; Jill said that she stayed up late to watch Perry Mason when she was a little girl and loved the fictional character Atticus Finch.

Our final film, with post-screening guests and First Amendment specialists Norman Siegel and Adam Liptak, the national legal affairs correspondent for the New York Times, proevided a most stimulating conversation on the limits of the First Amendment, and the way in which the right to free speech is America’s most cherished constitutional value, otherwise why would the Supreme Court rule in favor of Larry Flynt, a man who flouts all the social conventions of decency.  The film follows the various trials of Larry Flynt and how his porn empire and outrageous behavior tests the robustness and tolerance of the First Amendment.  If the First Amendment protects Flynt and his extreme behavior, then it clearly protects everyone.  The question that we discussed, however, is why does the First Amendment privilege speech over pain, why do we have such faith in the marketplace of ideas when the expression of those ideas–to the extent that they even are ideas–sometimes is calculated merely to hurt and offend?

Ron Kuby, on whom the Robert Downey, Jr. character is based in True Believer, and author and former New York Times legal correspondent David Margolick, were entertaining post-screening guests in this film about a lawyer who once fought for the innocence of his clients but now has become a mere defender of drug dealers, is righteously redeemed by once again fighting for innocence rather than challenging the legal system on constitutional due process.  If Reversal of Fortune was about a lawyer’s focus on legal process over truth and innocence, and if To Kill a Mockingbird is primarily about innocence and truth, then True Believer is a film where a lawyer cynically becomes focused exclusively on legal process and then is redeemed into the crusader that would make any Atticus Finch fan proud.

A fabulous evening with Cecilia Peck, an actress, film producer, and the daughter of Gregory Peck, Stuart Klawans, the film critic for the Nation, and federal judge John Keenan.  Gregory Peck’s son, Anthony, was also in the audience.  It was great to see the film just a few days before Halloween.  The audience and our post-screening guests discussed why it is that Atticus Finch is such an iconic fictional character, the model of the moral attorney, the embodiment of what we wish our lawyers and fathers to be.  Atticus Finch has influenced a generation of students to enter law school.  He, in fact, represents a moral clarity that we rarely see in the legal system itself.  Cecilia Peck showed footage of a documentary about her father that she co-produced, and it was interesting to see Gregory Peck, late in his life, talking about Atticus Finch as his favorite role.

Alan Dershowitz was ill and unable to attend the post-screening discussion about the film in which he is portrayed as a crusading law professor, aided by his students, seeking to overturn the conviction of attempted murder of their client before the Supreme Court of Rhode Island.   Annette Insdorf, a distinguished film critic, author and the head of the undergraduate film department at Columbia University, and my loyal and longtime friend, filled in ably and honorably.  Annette explained how the director of the film has always been drawn to dark and morally shady characters, not unlike Claus Van Bulow, the morally compromised protagonist of the film.  But from a legal perspective, the film is interesting in the way in which a lawyer, and his students, are more interested in the due process of law, challenging the government to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, than in the actual guilt or innocence of their client.  Legal process trumps truth.

The second night of the Film Festival resulted in a spirited conversation with author and columnist Ron Rosenbaum, a Shakespeare expert, who reminded the audience that the film version of the classic play is essentially “Shylock-light.”  Compared to the play, the film version softens the anti-Semitism, which, in Rosenbaum’s mind, is irredeemable.   For him, the play is radioactive, a propaganda piece for Jew-hatred and bigotry.  He told the audience how many productions of the play were mounted during the Third Reich, and that the decision to do so was not motivated by a love of Shakespeare, but rather in order to inflame the anti-Semitism that would eventually lead to Auschwitz.  Thane Rosenbaum, no relation to Ron other than as good friends, was more interested in the way in which Shylock is presented as a man who is pushed too far by his Christian tormentors, and so the “pound of flesh” that he seeks, the specific performance on the contract that he demands, is motivated entirely by rage and revenge rather than sound business judgment.  Portia may offer him the salvation that comes from Christian mercy, but he has no reason to accept her alternative remedy, given the way he has been so maliciously treated by Antonio and his friends.