Fictional Attorney of the Month: Amanda Bonner

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The 1949 film Adam's Rib pairs the popular duo Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, this time as married attorneys who square off against on another in court.

Amanda Bonner (Hepburn) represents Doris Attinger, a woman accused of assault after shooting her husband. Ms. Attinger suspected her husband of having an affair and fires a gun in a moment of passion. Amanda takes the case after her husband Adam (Tracy, perhaps a future FAotM?) is assigned the case for the prosecutor's office.

The movie highlights not just the inimitable chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn (although, to be fair, it's more often negative chemistry given the adversarial position of the parties), but also confronts some high courtroom drama concerning sex roles, stereotypes, domestic violence, and marital harmony.

And Amanda Bonner's masterful performance is good enough for the Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Lionel Hutz

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Phil Hartman voiced the recurring role of Springfield attorney Lionel Hutz in The Simpsons. A simple man, Hutz represented all the stereotypes of a small-town personal injury attorney--quick to talk and slow to understand. He's literally an ambulance chaser.

In one episode, for instance, he negotiates the terms of the trial with the devil, securing bathroom breaks every half-hour while the devil gets to select the members of the jury. In another, he encourages the Simpson family that despite the medical crisis facing their son, "You can ching, ching, ching, cash in on this tragedy!" When meeting with his client, he confesses, "The state bar forbids me from promising you a big cash settlement. But just between you and me, I promise you a big cash settlement. My fee is fifty percent."

The role was retired upon Mr. Hartman's death in 1998. But the amusing dry delivery and series of humorous courtroom-related scenes qualifies Hutz as the fictional attorney of the month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: John Shepherd

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Mr. Shepherd is a "civil, cautious lawyer," Jane Austen explains in her novel Persuasion, and he serves Sir Walter Elliot, a widower who finds himself deeply in debt. Mr. Shepherd is shrewd as a counselor: he defers to Mr. Elliot's neighbor, Lady Russell, to advise him as to the best means of reducing his debt. And Mr. Shepherd carefully prods Sir Elliot to lease his estate to a naval officer, highlighting the attractive qualities of such men and emphasizing the pitfalls of alternatives. It is an excellent display of the art of persuading a recalcitrant client.

Mr. Shepherd's motives, however, are not wholly pure. He foists his once-married daughter, Mrs. Clay, upon the Elliots in the hope that she would gain the confidence Sir Elliot's eldest daughter and perhaps even wed Sir Elliot himself. As Sir Elliot has only daughters, it would jeopardize their estate if he remarried and had a son. And it would ensure that Mr. Shepherd's interests, not Sir Elliot's, were paramount in these considerations. Mr. Shepherd calls into question whether he is truly serving his client's interests, or merely serving his own.

He may not be a paragon of virtue, but his sly role as an attorney is notable, underdiscussed, and good enough for the Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: The Man of Law

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Chaucer and the Man of Law, depicted by Ezra Winter in a Library of Congress mural.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales chronicles a group of Christians on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. To pass the time, the travelers tell stories. The narrator dutifully reports each tale, and the opening prologue describes the variety of pilgrims.

One is the Man of Law. Consider how the narrator describes him (and don't miss the "fee simple" pun):

A sergeant of the lawe, war and wys,
That often hadde been at the parvys,
Ther was also, ful riche of excellence.
Discreet he was and of greet reverence --
He semed swich, his wordes weren so wise.
Justice he was ful often in assise,
By patente and by pleyn commissioun.
For his science and for his heigh renoun,
Of fees and robes hadde he many oon.
So greet a purchasour was nowher noon:
Al was fee symple to hym in effect;
His purchasyng myghte nat been infect.
Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
And yet he semed bisier than he was.
In termes hadde he caas and doomes alle
That from the tyme of kyng william were falle.
Therto he koude endite, and make a thyng,
Ther koude no wight pynche at his writyng;
And every statut koude he pleyn by rote.
He rood but hoomly in a medlee cote.
Girt with a ceint of silk, with barres smale;
Of his array telle I no lenger tale.

The most scathing indictment of the man comes in the small line, "And yet he semed bisier than he was." It's a soft reminder today for hectic professionals: the appearance of busyness is often confused with actual busyness.

The Man of Law's tale is not as memorable as, say, the Wyfe of Bath's Tale, or the Knight's Tale, but his tale of adventure and romance is uplifting.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Bob Loblaw

Arrested Development features a cast of absurd characters doing absurd things.

One of those characters is Bob Loblaw, an attorney the Bluth family hires to help them with their myriad legal troubles. (He's hired to replace a deeply incompetent lawyer, Barry Zuckerkorn.)

His name, of course, is the first of the absurd things about him. But his attorney advertisement (video below) emphasizes points of absurdity, too, including the rhetorical question, "Why should you go to jail for a crime someone else noticed?" He chronically overbills his clients. Scott Baio's dry, essentially disinterested persona offers us this month's fictional attorney.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Charles Kingsfield

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The Paper Chase is a novel perhaps better known as a movie about a law student's first year at Harvard and his longing to understand the ever-elusive subject of Contracts taught by the brilliant Professor Charles Kingsfield. He is feared in his unending knowledge of the subject and his evisceration of ill-prepared students.

It might be that Kingsfield is a caricature of the crusty Socratic professors of old that his character is so memorable. But there's an infectiousness to his love of contracts that the protagonist adopts--and one that can draw in even the casual non-legal viewer. (Until they take Contracts, that is.)

And it's scenes like the one below that give the law school its mystique to the public.

Uploaded by IowaStateBar on 2011-08-12.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Willie Stark

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All the King's Men is an extraordinary novel. Robert Penn Warren is one of the very best writers of the twentieth century, and his prose in this work earned him the 1947 Pulitzer. He wrote this great Southern novel about Willie Stark, a politician inspired by the life of Louisiana's Huey Long. Stark is a gifted speaker whose righteous indignation and populist outrage inspires broad political support among the people of Louisiana. He climbs from a lowly local office to the governor's mansion. (The novel has twice been adapted to film--the actor portraying Stark in the 1949 version was Broderick Crawford.)

The story is narrated by Jack Burden, a law school drop-out turned journalist who becomes a part of Stark's machine. There are a number of legal themes throughout the work, ranging from a corrupt judge to commentary on the bar exam. And the implications of lawlessness are thought-provoking for anyone with an inclination to law.

There are too many good things to discuss in this book for a small Fictional Attorney of the Month post. But allow me to share one of my favorite quotations in the book, Stark's description of what law is and its perceived underinclusiveness:

"No," the Boss corrected, "I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. In fact, I know a lot of law. And I made me some money out of law. But I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different."

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Philip Banks

James Avery died this past New Year's Eve. He was perhaps known best for his portrayal of Philip Banks in the television sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," starring Will Smith as his nephew from the streets of Philadelphia now living in a posh Los Angeles suburb with his extended family.

Judge Banks was a Princeton and Harvard Law alum who practiced law at the southern California law firm of Firth, Wynn and Meyer. He was appointed to the bench and served as a judge for the bulk of the show's run. He even experienced the joys of campaigning for political office, as California elects its judges.

And, in his honor, he's this month's Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Harvey Dent

In the Batman comic series--and in the 2008 film Batman: The Dark Knight--Harvey Dent is an ideal district attorney. He's a tough-on-crime prosecutor who won't be intimidated or bribed by the crime bosses running Gotham. Given that law enforcement (i.e., Batman and Commissioner James Gordon) need a representative on the legal side of things, Dent's role is crucial.

Alas, such an alliance cannot last. Dent is disfigured when a crime boss splashes his face with sulfuric acid, leaving half of his face exposed with gruesome scarring.

Dent becomes the enemy: "Two-Face." His face reflects his split personality, his crisis of conscience: sometimes good, sometimes evil. He carries a coin with him, and he uses the coin to render decisions for him: good or evil, heads or tails, the choice left to fate.

I confess that I'd love to read the story of the Gotham Bar Association revoking Dent's bar license for criminal activity... but that's probably only going to be of interest among those for whom the Fictional Attorney of the Month is of interest. Until then, the ethics will remain an underground, niche storyline.