Law Commons^™

Can They Do That? Legal Ethics In Popular Culture: Of Characters And Acts, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay describes the depiction of modern lawyers' professional ethics in literature, films, and television, and distinguishes between personal and professional character and specific acts. Depictions of lawyers in modern popular culture are more complex and nuanced than older treatments and allow law students, lawyers, and legal academics an opportunity to examine both ethical rule violations and "micro" behavioral choices, as well as character and more "macro" professional career choices and philosophies in a variety of contexts and serialized plot, treatments. Treatments of professional ethics in more recent popular culture are also contrasted to more literary examinations of both lawyers' …