By: Abisola Fatade
A few weeks ago AMC celebrated the 15th anniversary of Philadelphia and I happened to catch the last 15 minutes of the film. Watching Denzel Washington expose the sleazy law firm that fired it’s top Associate because of prejudice did not strike me as unusual much as a film about a man in the 1950s “passing” as white, when discovered to be black is subsequently fired, would not have been shocking. What struck me about the film is that it reminded me that rarely are law firms depicted as vessels of truth and justice. The law itself is portrayed as the great equalizer, and even the justice system is portrayed in a relatively positive light, for if a 12 person jury with its own pre-conceived notions of homosexuals and AIDS could find for the plaintiff then the system can’t be all bad. However, it’s the law firm that is the figure of “evil”. I was reminded of Michael Clayton a film that I liked very much and not just because the title character was a Fordham law alum. I was reminded of Clayton because it was another film in a long line of films that portray the firm as being this independent evil entity but within which apparently decent human beings live. How is that possible? How can a firm which to be certain, is an independent legal person, but nonetheless controlled by actual beings, be so evil and yet have good people working for it? Back to Philadelphia. Mary Steenburgen plays the attorney for the firm and at one point she whispers to co-council that she hates the case, yet she agreed to defend it. In Clayton, George Clooney’s character is not bad, he is a seemingly decent individual with a crappy job, but continues to work at his firm doing dirty jobs. He does it for the money. That seems to be the simplest explanation for why seemingly good people work for firms with a singular goal of making profit. Conversely, the artist thinks that the individual is the victim of a corporate structure that thrives on groupthink. I’m not so sure either perspective is satisfactory. I think that people work for law firms because they need the money but also because they think that the work they do has no effect on their soul. They believe that they can separate the two halves of their lives because anyone who truly believed that working for a firm was evil would supposedly leave and find some other employ. The problem is that it is almost virtually impossible to accomplish this feat, and films such as the Firm, Philadelphia and Michael Clayton are the artists’ way of saying that you can’t play with dirt and not get dirty. Those of us graduating this year with Associate positions in hand, should bear this in mind.
