Don’t we all just love to watch those onscreen lawyers who thrive on flexible ethics, infuriating tactics, and an unorthodox knowledge of the law? They may even remind us of an adversary or two... The College of Law rounds up the top 10 lawyers you love to hate - if they weren’t so delightfully hilarious or doomed. Machiavellian from start to finish, you'll be hard-pressed to find a redeemable quality amongst them - which is also why we love to watch them.
1. Louis Canning foils every Good Fight (and Good Wife)
In The Good Fight, Michael J. Fox reprised his role as the reprehensible Louis Canning made famous in The Good Wife. Canning is a cunning lawyer who lives with tardive dyskinesia, a neurological condition which causes erratic body movements. Playing against audience expectations of a ‘perfect victim’, Canning routinely exploits his condition - dropping canes from courtroom tables, for example - to blindside opposing counsel and win the sympathies of juries and judges alike. Other than his courtroom tactics and constant double-crossing, Canning often turns up to defend the most absurd claims from cashed up clients - such as refusing to recognise the authority of a federal court judge and appearing when subpoenaed. This is an intentional echo of the worst of populist politics, an indictment of lawyers fully aware of the law, willing to push - or even ignore - the limits of the law for a client willing to pay them to do so.
2. Chuck Rhoades hates your Billions
Crossing the floor to controversial public prosecutors, we arrive at U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades from Billions. Rhoades is the pop cultural embodiment of every cautionary tale told of overzealous prosecutors… dialled up to 11. He prides himself as a ruthless hunter of Wall Street billionaires - and his kill streak is formidable. Of the 81 insider trading cases he’s prosecuted, he’s lost zero. It’s what makes him the perfect brick wall for newly minted wunderkind Bobby Axelrod, as the show pits two opposing ideologies against each other in a UFC-worthy fight for the ages. Drowning in daddy issues, Chuck Rhoades’ own wealth is buoyed by his abusive father’s successes in property and trading. Plus, his wife works for his nemesis, Bobby. If that’s not a recipe for drama, who knows what is?
3. Fisk doesn’t give a f…toss
Probate specialist Helen Tudor-Fisk is the opposite of an inspiring lawyer. Plying her trade in the forgotten suburbs of Melbourne, she’s the every-lawyer - indeed, 84% of Australia’s legal practitioners are sole practitioners, and only 1% of Australian law firms feature more than 21 principals. In this gently hilarious ABC comedy, Fisk washes up in Melbourne after the demise of her marriage in Sydney, joining a classic suburban firm run by a brother and sister. Famous for her shapeless brown suit and no-nonsense approach to client work, Fisk gets the job done - without a smile, and without ever getting too invested in any particular matter. She lives rent-free in her retired father’s granny flat; her father was a judge with echoes of Michael Kirby AC CMG, complete with an exasperated life partner who is perpetually on a mission to evict Fisk. Arguably, she’s living the dream. But she’d never say so.
4. The Rake you love and hate
In many ways, Cleaver Greene is classic Sydney. He’s a brilliantly self-destructive charm offensive wrapped up in a good suit. A witty iconoclast, Cleaver spends his time wrangling a bafflingly successful career in between a slew of his favourite diversions: women, drugs and gambling. One thing’s for sure: he is 100% Big Sydney Energy, a handsome mess of good intentions, unhelpful addictions, and devastating observations.
Like all Australian greats, Cleaver Greene became so deliciously rake-ish that Americans felt the need to do their own version - with a mild name change, the protagonist was ‘Keegan Deane.’ Never heard of it? Neither had we.
5. Fired up and ready to do some Damages
As a career, becoming a class action litigator lives in the Venn diagram overlap of dreams: you can become a freshly minted millionaire and champion clients who might otherwise be priced out of excellent legal counsel. That’s exactly how graduate lawyer Ellen Parsons in Damages feels when she’s offered a job at Hewes & Associates, serving the formidable, frequently unethical, Patty Hewes. Patty is played to ice-queen-perfection by Glenn Close, as she schools her protégé in her ruthless tradecraft. Buoyed by her brand new six figure salary, Ellen soon realises that Patty hired her for her personal connection to the firm’s major class action - but by this point, she’s already in too deep.
6. Behind every Gone Girl is a great lawyer
That old chestnut... Boy meets girl at a painfully cool party in New York. He’s a writer for a men’s magazine; she’s a crossword puzzler with a fancy degree and fancy trust fund. With all the money in the world, they fall in love. Until an economic catastrophe hits, and they move to the deeply suburban Midwest.
With none of the money in the world, they fall out of love. Boy finds a new cool girl. And when his original girl disappears, detectives follow a series of extremely convenient clues that lead them to... Nick Dunne, the cheating husband with a missing wife.
Enter Tanner Bolt. Saviour of society’s latest pariahs, the remorseful husband, Tanner is a smooth-talking defence attorney also known as a ‘patron saint to wife killers everywhere’. So when Nick Dunne turns up at Tanner’s marble-floored lobby, Tanner delivers a pitch perfect offer: “You came to the right guy. This is what I do, Nick. This is why I have a $100,000 retainer. I win the unwinnable cases. We’ll give you a special ‘my wife is skilled in the art of vengeance’ rate.”
Tanner understands the law is as much about optics and storytelling as it is about justice. And when the case is wrapped up, Tanner departs, declaring the whole affair as a ‘Miracle of the Mississippi.’
7. Billy Flynn, king of the Chicago Razzle Dazzle
Self-proclaimed “silver tongued prince of the courtroom”, Billy Flynn is arguably the godfather of well-heeled criminal lawyers. The undisputed master of ‘Razzle Dazzle’, his own personal term for his personal twist on courtroom stagecraft, Billy Flynn is willing to do whatever it takes to sway juries and judges alike. As he (literally) tap dances his way through half-truths and full-blown lies, puppeteering witnesses and clients to say exactly what he wants, for example, “we both reached for the gun”. In a world as celebrity-obsessed as Chicago, Flynn’s amorality is richly rewarded. After all, as Flynn would say, “how can you hear the truth above the roar?”
8. Aaron Burr, Sir
Aaron Burr, a.k.a. the man who will be remembered in infamy as the lawyer who murdered fellow lawyer and American founding father Alexander Hamilton. This is potentially a controversial entry about a controversial historical figure. If Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop masterpiece Hamilton is to be believed, Aaron Burr harboured a feud many may empathise with - his rival, a come-from-nothing immigrant whose talent constantly eclipsed his own ambition at every critical turn. This is ultimately a cautionary tale - a lawyer who let a petty, life-defining-rivalry escalate into a career-spanning-feud that proved fatal.
9. Suit up and Litt up!
Everyone has met a Louis Litt in their lifetime. Maybe you’ve met three. The primary antagonist to hero Harvey Specter in Suits, Louis Litt is a corporate attorney with the highest billables in the firm - and an ego to match. In between scheming, double-crossing and some light embezzlement, he is most well-known for coining his own catchphrase: “You just got Litt up!” (His version of “You got served!”).
Ever the humble partner, he even finds the time to emblazon his motto onto company promo material.
10. It’s all good, man (with Saul Goodman)
We finish with the gold standard of dodgy lawyers, Better Call Saul. A lawyer so dodgy he changed his name from Jimmy to Saul Goodman, because he felt it sounded like “It’s all good, man!” His wily ways and willingness to skirt the sharpest edges of the law have won him a very specific kind of clientele - and one he is more than happy to represent.
Exiled from his brother’s reputable law firm, Saul strikes out on his own. His firm features gaudy Grecian pillars reminiscent of the Acropolis and he has a framed inscription of the U.S. Constitution plastered on the wall behind his desk. Running TV ads – that would be prohibited in Australia under the strict marketing guidelines governing local lawyers – icons like the Statue of Liberty and the American flag are used as backdrops for Saul’s call to viewers that they have ‘Rights’, which he is happy to defend.
The best way to think of Saul Goodman is through the eyes of his clients, like street-level drug dealer, Jesse Pinkman. When Jesse connects Breaking Bad protagonist Walter White to Saul, he does so with the introduction: “You don’t want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer.”
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