Art Imitates Life: TV Law Shows & Pop Culture

The Annual Meeting program Lawyers in Your Living Room focuses on an issue that also has been the subject of a book, an ABA Journal article, and a public presentation--legal programs and their impact on popular culture.

Everything I learned about the law came from TV, or was it law school?

“Lawyers in our living rooms” – the idea of legal programs and their impact on popular culture has received much more than its 15 minutes of fame this month.  An Annual Meeting panel, a new book, an ABA Journal cover story and a public program all spotlighted the many TV shows, from “Perry Mason” to “Law & Order” to “Judge Judy,” that inform and entertain the public about the fascinating world of lawyers and courtrooms.

The American Bar Association has just published a new book on the subject also called Lawyers in Your Living Room! Law on Television.  The book features 38 chapters about law and lawyers on television and includes celebrity intros by Sam Waterston (Jack McCoy on Law & Order) and James Woods (Sebastian Stark on Shark).

Lawyers in Your Living Room starts with the classic shows of the 1960’s—Perry Mason and The Defenders. It continues with the shows of the 1980s, including L.A. Law, and the 1990s, such as Ally McBeal, Murder One, and The Practice. It covers present shows as well, with chapters on Law & Order, Boston Legal, Shark, Damages, and JAG.

The Annual Meeting panel drew together law professors and a public-defender-turned-TV-writer for several successful legal programs, all of whom had contributed to the book.  The discussion ranged from analysis of specific shows to the larger question of responsibility to educate rather than merely entertain when the subject is the legal profession.

While television glamorizes the practice of law, the image of lawyers and the pace of courtroom proceedings, law school debunks all that, the panel concluded.  UCLA law professor and author of Lawyers in Your Living Room, Michael Asimow said that from the first day of law school, students’ impression of lawyers is “terrible [because] most of what they learn is from pop culture.  This stuff has an effect.”

And ABA Journal weighed in with its picks of the “The 25 Greatest Legal TV Shows” in its August issue.  Using a “jury” of 12 experts—nine lawyers, two academics and a TV critic, all who write or teach about the convergence of popular culture and the law—the Journal rated and ranked the 25 best.  For a complete list of the top 25, see www.abajournal.com/magazine.

As part of its Public Program Series, ABA’s Division for Public Education also featured the topic of lawyers and TV, bringing in three of the Journal’s “jurors” for a discussion on the impact of TV legal shows on public perception of lawyers, the courts and the legal system.  ABA Journal Editor Ed Adams moderated the hour-long program which drew a crowd at the ABA’s Chicago headquarters.

Did “Judge Judy” help or hurt?—The Annual Meeting Program

Professor Nancy Marder, Kent College of Law, Chicago, conducted a lively analysis of the impact of “Judge Judy” on both consumer perceptions and the empowerment of women, as part of the Lawyers & Living Rooms discussion at Annual Meeting program Saturday.

Marder, who admits she doesn’t even own a TV (“that’s what DVDs are for”) believes Judy did a “great disservice to actual judges and the way they do their jobs.”  Her eye rolling, body language and grimaces were very “unjudgelic,” according to Professor Mader.

While her courtroom set actually resembled a real courtroom, most of her antics did not reflect the demeanor and role of a judge.  The show, and Judy herself, blurred the line between judging and entertainment.  Judge Judy, prior to her transition to television performer, was a judge for many years but no longer sat on the bench during the years the show ran.  The cases she heard on television were real cases, with real parties in small claims disputes.  But they were paid to appear on the show.  In her robes, Judy looked like a judge, but she didn’t act like one.  Her “loudness and brashness are expected because she is competing for a television audience,” theorized Professor Marder.

And she missed the teachable moment available to sitting judges.  Instead of giving reasons for her decisions, she simply issued pronouncements from her TV bench and failed to explain the importance of following the laws that were breached.

The one redeeming trait Marder noted in her presentation on “Judge Judy” was her empowerment of women.  The show imparted “important lessons to women appearing before her and to the audience comprised mostly of women,” she said.  Her message, “women: think for yourselves.  Men need to act responsibly.  Just because a man is unthinking, doesn’t mean you have to be unthinking.”