What is it about movies or television shows that involve a lawyer defending the little guy? Why is it that we never root for the attorneys representing big business, yet we practically jump out of our movie theater seats to clap for the David-beating-Goliath lawyer, like Rudy Baylor, the character portrayed by Matt Damon played in the 1997 movie, The Rainmaker?
In that movie, based on a John Grisham novel, Baylor, a barely-out-of-law-school attorney (he actually takes the Bar exam after he’s taken on a landmark case) wins a monster case against a powerful law firm representing a monster insurance firm, Great Benefit Life Insurance.
We rooted for young Rudy Baylor because he uncovered the reckless behavior exhibited by higher-ups at Great Benefit Life Insurance, who ordered their employees to routinely deny every claim for benefits.
And just like we rooted for Rudy Baylor, we rooted for the title character in the biopic, Erin Brockovich (who was not a lawyer but a legal clerk, while working for a law firm, constructed a case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which led to a $333 million settlement, the largest ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in U.S. history.
It seems the average viewer wants the average Joe to succeed.
Who do lawyers root for when they watch these movies? It’s something I always wondered.
In the ABC dramedy, Eli Stone, the show’s title character is going through a life transformation of sorts. And that’s why those of us who watch the dramedy, are rooting for Stone, even though he once on the side we tend not to root for being that he was a highly ambitious corporate lawyer himself.
Stone, who is getting odd hallucinations due to his recently diagnosed brain aneurism (or the fact that he’s a prophet), once thrived on representing big business, the typical client of Wethersby, Posner & Klein, the San Francisco firm that he is employed by.
It appears that things are not so clear for Stone, who acts as if he’s not so sure if what he loves what he once stood for.
What makes this show unique is that he doesn’t up and quit the firm and start his own, or spend time in his off-hours representing the “little guy” or “victim” as Simon Baker’s character did in another legal drama that I once watched, The Guardian.
No, Stone is still working at the big firm, although he’s not always working with them.
In this past week’s episode (Feb. 28’s “One More Try”), “new Eli” gets to correct a case that “Old Eli” won five years ago using shady and questionable methods for a motor vehicle manufacturer. When the manufacturer settled, the lawyer representing the victim, is shocked that this is the same Eli Stone he battled in court the first time around.
And in the pilot episode, Eli ends up building a case that leads to a $5.2 settlement for his ex-girlfriend, who claimed her son developed autism because of the Mercuritol used in a flu vaccine given to him when he was two-years-old. The vaccine was manufactured by Beutel Pharmaceuticals, one of Wethersby, Posner & Klein’s biggest clients. Needless to say, Stone’s bosses weren’t exactly pleased.
We like to think that all corporate attorneys, knowing that their client is indeed in the wrong, would do something about it. But is that realistic?
Throughout the five years that I spent working as a newspaper reporter, I had the chance to meet many corporate attorneys representing large companies. Whenever they appeared in front of local boards, for example to represent a large developer, local residents would protest, saying they didn’t want any demolition going on in their neighborhood for fear of pollution. I remember this one resident pulling me aside to tell me that the city council and the corporate lawyers are “probably making deals in a smoky room” in the back of city hall.
I wonder how many people think that really goes on.
