About Your Blogger Let's not waste too much time on stats. So very briefly:
I was a corporate attorney at a mega-firm in NYC. Now I work at a middle-market family-run independent insurance agency. I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with my brilliant wife, who also happens to blog at Rosmania. (Check it out.)
Disclaimers Nothing contained on this site should be construed to be legal, business, insurance or tax advice. If you need professional legal advice, find a professional. There are plenty of them out there. If thet’re good, I think that they ultimately pay for themselves.
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This season Fox will air an Apprentice-style reality show called The Partner, in which recent law school graduates will compete for a lucrative position as a "partner" at a major law firm.
This show should bring the same type of honor to the legal profession that Halliburton brought to the oil and gas industries, Jeff Skilling brought to Enron, and Dick Cheney brings to the office of the Vice President.
But don't get me wrong -- I'll be home to watch every episode. Its going to be great entertainment, its going to be terrible for the profession.
Its going to be like one season-long lawyer joke.
"What do you call 10 episodes of The Practice at the bottom of Nielsen's? A good start ..."
Probably the biggest problem with the show is its very premise. The very focus of the competition is on showmanship and on lawyers instead of issues. For the puroses of the show "it doesn't matter who's right or wrong in the case, it's who does a better job arguing," as Fox's reality programming executive Mike Darnell freely admits. That's just wrong.
Its the opposite of what our legal system is designed to do. We shouldn't reward the party that can hire the best lawyer. Yes, better lawyers win when they should lose and that is part of the reality of our systems, but it is not the part that should be celebrated. Our legal system is designed to ferret out the truth and give redress for wrongs. The system is not about the lawyers, its is about the plaintiffs and defendants. The show is about the lawyers and that's wrong.
But it is more than that. Even the purported prize is perplexing. What "major law firm" is going to hire an attorney based on a reality TV show? Maybe a plaintiff's bar firm like Milberg Weiss or Lerach Coughlin would, but I seriously doubt that any major "white shoe" law firm would. Major law firms have major clients -- clients that aren't looking for flash and publicity, but for honor, discretion, experience and knowledge. Those aren't the "goods" that reality TV delivers.
Then, the idea of making a first year lawyer a partner at a major firm! Absurd. Major firms have legions of smart, hard working young associates who slave away for years -- often 8, 9, 10 years or more -- just for the opportinity to be considered for partnership. Are they really going to piss off all those loyal associates by letting a first year associate leap frog them all and become an instant partner? In my opinion, that's not likely to happen.
And there's also the proposed catch phrase. Word is that Rocket Science Laboratories, the show's production company, is scrambling to trademark such phrases as "You're disbarred" which will be uttered Trump-style by the "judge". Why? Do they even understand what that term means? To be disbarred is "to be expelled from the bar or the legal profession." It happens if you steal money from your client or intentionally throw a case, not because you lose a make-belive case in mock trial. It just doesn't make sense. And its offensive.
But don't get me wrong. I'll be watching despite it all.
