Best of the Blogs: SVU, Carrots, and Yale Law

When I write the “Best of the Blogs” feature, I usually try to identify some common theme that ties together some of my favorite posts of the past week.  It doesn’t seem to be working this week.  I’ll leave it as a challenge to enterprising readers to see if they can connect the following dots in some way that is eluding me.

First, I stumbled across this fun blog called Prime-Time Crime Review.  The author is a real-life sex-crimes prosecutor named Allison Leotta.  She posts after each new episode of Law & Order: SVU with an evaluation of how realistic the episode was.  I could pitch this blog as a crim-pro supplement for law students, but really it’s much more entertaining than that would imply.  Sample comments on the October 14 episode:

What they got wrong: First, the dress the new ADA was wearing. Skin-tight red leather with ruffles? I don’t think so. But she did look amazing. But then she went over the top with her lawyering tactics. When the nutty professor came in to plea bargain with his high-paid lawyer, they argued and the prof asked, “Can I fire him?” The ADA answered, “Sure!” and got the prof a new (young, inexperienced) lawyer. That would never happen in real life. The criminal justice system is adversarial, which means the prosecutor cannot advise the defendant, hook him up with a defense attorney, or even talk to him alone once he has a lawyer. If a defendant asks a prosecutor for a new lawyer, she can set up a hearing where the judge can listen to his concerns and appoint a new lawyer for him. This was as realistic as Jennifer Aniston selecting the dress for Anglina Jolie to wear to the Oscars.

The blog reminds me of one of my favorite lines from my all-time favorite TV lawyer — while watching L.A. Law, Lionel Hutz sarcastically observed, “Oh, sure, like lawyers work in big skyscrapers and have secretaries. Look at him, he’s wearing a belt!”  

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Lawyers and Happiness (And a Little Bit of Virtue Ethics)

Most of the lawyers I know are happy to be lawyers.  They take pride in their work, and they feel good about their role in the justice system.  Life as a lawyer isn’t easy, but it’s rewarding and fulfilling.

But it seems like there’s a perception that has intensified in the past decade or so that lawyers are miserable—that we feel alienated from the profession and that justice rarely plays a role in our tedious, all-consuming work.  There’s a stereotype of a “soulless” lawyer who works to pay off debt or make more money but who feels no satisfaction with the job.    I’m not sure how true this stereotype is (see above), but it’s prevalent and widely discussed.  (Raise the Bar:  Real World Solutions for a Troubled Profession is an interesting book published by the ABA that contains multiple essays exploring the “miserable lawyer” question.)  I want my law students to become lawyers who are happy in their chosen profession, and this blog seems as good a place as any to consider happiness and lawyering.

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Writing Is The Right Way To Go

Professor Fallone left a thoughtful comment on my last post, pointing out that Marquette goes farther in emphasizing practical lawyering skills than many of its peer institutions. I agree with him, and from my experience, one of the most important practical “lawyering skills” that is emphasized here at Marquette is legal writing and research. I consider myself fortunate to have been assigned to Professor Julien’s section of LAWR I my 1L year. Even though I still have nightmares about losing that Writing Bee shirt in the final round (thanks to the space I should have put between So. and 2d), in the end, I gained much more from her class than I lost.

We learned the basics — pronoun-antecedent agreement (her pet peeve), citation, punctuation, and CREAC. But we were taught something more that I will never be able to put a value on. Professor Julien helped us to become passionate about writing.  

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