- Perhaps we could reach as high as 57.5. - With all due respect, Mr. Brackman, this is not a negotiation. - It's definitely a negotiation. (bright music) Hey, Legal Eagles, D. James Stone here teaching you how to think like a lawyer so you can crush law school. I knew from a very early age
that I wanted to be a lawyer. And not just any lawyer, a trial lawyer. And I learned that by
watching lawyers on TV. Now having been a trial
attorney for over 10 years now, I see that some shows are
more realistic than others, so I thought I'd take some time to review some of the
most famous legal scenes from TV history. The first scene comes
from the show Ally McBeal. - Well, as I said, her arm brushed mine. And when she brushes an arm,
it's with sexual intent. - Objection.
- Just tell us what happened after she brushed your arm, sir. - So, that's actually a
really good objection, the kind of objection you
would see in most trials. The witness here is testifying to things that he has no
personal knowledge of, which is specifically what
the mental impressions are of another person. You can't testify as to what
another person is thinking. So, the objection that's
being made was correct, and the judge was right to sustain it. They didn't actually say, objection, lack of personal
knowledge or speculation, but the judge understood
that and made the right call. - When I looked at her there was, I was feeling a little chemistry. She, uh, then brought her
hand to my, uh, my, uh-- - So that's a good
recovery by this witness. The judge sustained the objection to essentially speculation, and the witness then
proceeds to talk about only those things that
he personally observed. And he testifies to two things, one as to his internal state of mind, which he's allowed to testify to. And he also testifies as to physical acts that he actually watched, he was a percipient witness to. An expert can opine about things that are outside of
their personal knowledge, but a lay witness like most witnesses can only testify to the
things that they have seen, or heard, or personally witnessed. So, that's what this
witness is doing here. - Groin area. She began to fondle me
a little, and I, well-- (screams) - So, sometimes there
are outbursts in court. That's not particularly unusual. I think the screeching that
the attorney has done here is a little bit unusual, and is really bad for his client. So, he would be better served
by keeping his mouth shut and not screeching in a way that prejudices his client. Potentially, that's a
prejudicial act to his client, which sometimes you can't control things, and things happen. But being professional in court
is a very important thing. You don't wanna lose credibility in front of the judge or the jury. And while that particular
yelp was probably unrealistic, what is actually more
realistic about this show compared to most is that the lawyers are not running around the well of the court, the area between the
judge and counsel table like they own the place. It appears that the attorney
who is asking questions is right in front of counsel table. And usually if you're
conducting an examination, you're not gonna be right
up against the witness, you're not gonna be pacing
up and down the well. You're gonna be either at counsel table or you're gonna be behind it, and here it appears that the attorney is just in front of counsel table, which is usually allowed. You have to ask permission of the judge if you are going to enter the well. But they're not doing
something that's crazy like running around, yelling, like you'll see in a lot
of procedural dramas. So, that part is actually realistic, the yelp is probably not so realistic. The next scene is from Boston Legal. - Routinely go to church on Sundays and ceremoniously eat the body
of Christ, drink his blood. "He who eats my flesh and
drinks my blood abides in me, "and I in him," Jesus said that. - How dare you. - What? Who have I offended now? - How dare you take a
holy sacrament literally? - Is that not done? - You have equated it with
a vile and despicable act. - Okay, so here a couple
things are going on. It appears that the attorney
is giving a closing argument about a client who has conducted an act of cannibalism, and he is defending that by saying that there are other religious orders that conduct an act that
is similar to cannibalism. The judge here has done essentially the worst thing you can do as a judge which is to opine personally
against another attorney. So, he's taken offense at something that the attorney has said. He is not making a legal argument, he is simply just issuing
his own personal thoughts about what is or is not allowable according to the scripture. That's the worst thing
that a judge can do. A judge is supposed to be impartial, and if you have lost your impartiality, and it's clear to the jury that you are no longer impartial, then it's your duty as a judge probably to declare a mistrial, and potentially there could be some professional responsibility actions taken against the judge, because he's shown that
he cannot be impartial. The next step that I would
do if I was an attorney is move to dismiss the
judge for being prejudiced, and I would use the record of the court to show this lack of impartiality. Potentially that's the plan
that this attorney has done is to show that the judge
is not being impartial and trying to get some
favor from the jury. But a long-standing judge, as it appears this judge would be, would never make these sort of statements, and if they did they could
be removed from the office. - I apologize, Your Honor. I certainly don't mean
to indict Holy Communion. But let's not carry on with the idea that the
notion of cannibalism offends the sanctity of life. It has roots not only in sacraments, not to be taken literally,
but also Greek mythology. It's still glorified in certain sections of both the South and I believe Malibu. And I might add, it's not illegal. - So, the lawyer here is
making an impassioned plea, which you're allowed to do to the jury, but in so doing it sounds
like he's bringing in a lot of facts and figures that almost certainly did
not come out in trial. And it's really important for the jury only to use facts that came out in trial to base their decision. And all of these statistics, it's possible that the lawyer brought them in through a
process called judicial notice, which is that sometimes
there are statistics that are so incontrovertible
that the court will just allow them to
be brought into court without showing an underlying basis. For example, if you were going to say that a certain date occurred on a certain day, like a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you could show that on a calendar, and that fact would be so incontrovertible that you're allowed to bring that in. These statistics about cannibalism and about the notion of who and who is not cared for by the government, that seems like a pretty far stretch, and it would be improper
for him to cloud the record with these extrinsic facts
that did not come out. The next scene comes from L.A. Law. - UCLA, Harvard Law. - Ooh, UCLA. - Editor of the Law Review. Ames Competition, Best Oralist. - So, the Ames Competition
is a real life competition at Harvard Law that is for a moot court. And they're saying that this person won Best Oralist at the
moot court competition. Moot court is where attorneys pretend to be appellate
attorneys, not trial attorneys, and they handle a fake
appellate court case in front of a panel of judges. And the Ames moot court
competition is very famous. They are so famous, in fact, that they often get Supreme Court judges to judge the competitors. So, that's a fun real life
fact that they threw in there. - [Leland] Oh my, I'm
impressed, Mr. Rawlins. - Thank you, sir. - An attorney could often
be impressed by that resume. He went to UCLA for
undergrad, Harvard Law School, won the moot court competition, and he's now interviewing
for a job in Los Angeles. That's not a bad resume to bring in there. - Tell us a bit about yourself. - Well, let's see, my
mother's an attorney, my father's a professor of
economics as UC Riverside. I've clerked for the past few summers at Felder, Ivy, McCoy. As a matter of fact, they
offered me a permanent position, but under the heading less is more, I think that a small prestigious firm such as McKenzie, Brackman could be more responsive
to my personal needs, or at least Bill Howard-- - That's really interesting. So, that is a very realistic way of going about getting
a job in law school. This seems to be a recent graduate from Harvard Law School. He said he clerked for a
few years at a law firm. I don't think the law firm is real, but often the way you get a
job in law school is you clerk, it's called a summer
associateship with a law firm, and if you do a good
job in your 2L summer, then they will often offer
you a job upon graduation. And what this young man
is saying he's doing is he doesn't wanna work for
this big prestigious law firm. Instead he wants to come out and interview with this boutique law firm, because it suits his whatever it is that he's looking for in Los Angeles. So, so far a pretty realistic reason for this young man to apply for a job at this law
firm, so far so good. - At least Bill Howard thinks so. - Bill Howard as in Howard Enterprises? - Yes, sir. He's been a close, personal
friend of my family for years. - Oh boy. I don't think it's particularly realistic to drop names in the interview. That might go unsaid, but to bring it up and to boast about your family connections in the middle of the interview, that's not good form. It happens, it probably happens
more often than it should. People are probably better served by getting in through
merit than connections. But, you know, sometimes
family connections matter. It's a part of the world. - Thank you. - What would you be looking
for in the way of compensation? - 72.5, and I wouldn't be opposed to your designating a percentage of that as a signing bonus. - Excuse me, but we've been
starting our associates pretty much commensurate
with the going rate, which as I'm sure you're aware, is considerably lower. - I understand, sir, but I've already been
offered 71 with Horton, Gold. - So much for your
doctrine of less is more. - Sometimes more is more. - This is really interesting. It's not often that junior associates bargain so hard for their salary. But what he's saying is that the firm that he was a summer associate
at, and he clerked there, has already given him a
job offer, which is normal. He spent his summer there, and they gave him an
offer upon graduation. He's trying to leverage that to get a better salary at this law firm. And most law firms do actually adhere to sort of a standard rate. This is in the early
'90s or the late '80s, and they're talking about
salaries of $70,000 or more. That seems about right for the time. These days, graduates
from prestigious law firms going into the top notch law firms are likely to get a salary of between 160,000 and $190,000 per year, and there's sort of a standard
scale that is applied. And most law firms say
that they are lockstep so you don't have any bargaining power. They pay all first year
associates X amount, between 160 and 190, and he's trying to do
his best to get even more out of this firm. So, good for him, I wish it was possible
for more law students to bargain more, but sadly most law firms are lockstep, and not a lot of bargaining power there. - Well, perhaps we could
reach as high as 57.5. - With all due respect, Mr. Brackman, this is not a negotiation. - It's definitely a negotiation. - Gentlemen, it's been a
genuine honor and a pleasure. Thank you very much. - He's a winner. I want him to be our winner. - I strongly disagree. - I'm pulling rank, Douglas. - What are you gonna do when his salary becomes common knowledge among the other associates. - We'll see that it doesn't. - Ooh, that's true. Because law firms ostensibly pay first year associates all the same, if it became public knowledge that one associate was paid significantly more than the rest, that would cause some dissent. The next clip comes from Boston Legal. - Value of human life, it's a bugger. My friend Jerry Spence tells a story of this paperboy delivering his papers on his morning route one day. He throws the paper through the window, shatters the glass, blinds a woman. What's the value of that? Paperboy decides to give the woman his profits for the week, not very much considering she was blinded. Now here we have a loss of
life, an avoidable loss. Not merely an accident, one
they could have prevented. I think the paperboy had the right idea. At the end of this trial, I'm gonna get up. I'm gonna ask the
defendant to pay my client one week's profit. Let's make that a day's profit. Let's not get greedy, here. We may not be able to put a
price Mary Finnerty's life, but you can at least pay her family the profits for the day they killed her. - So, there's a couple
things going on here, which are pretty interesting. Number one is that there are almost always two phases to major personal injury cases. Sometimes they are tried together, sometimes they are tried separately, and there are reasons for that. And the two things that you
have to show is liability, which means that the defendant is responsible for the
injuries of the plaintiff, but then separate from that is, how much compensation should
the defendant pay the plaintiff if they are liable. And those are often called
liability versus compensation. So, here the attorney is pretty confident, or perhaps they've already
established liability, and so they're simply going to the damages portion of the trial. And what he's hinting at
is how do you compensate a plaintiff for the injury
that they have received. And in the law there are
two ways of going about it. One is pure compensation for the injury, so however much you're injured, you're gonna get a monetary sum that is equal to that amount. But if the defendant's actions are so egregious that
they warrant punishment, it's rare in civil cases, but sometimes you're allowed what are called punitive damages. And that's what William
Shatner here is hinting at. He's saying that as a punitive measure, the defendant should
be required to disgorge a single day's profit for the
injuries that they caused. And I don't know what
law is being broken here that would allow him to
get punitive damages. Punitive damages are somewhat rare. They usually require some
sort of egregious conduct. But if you are allowed punitive damages, sometimes they're set by law and sometimes they are
just simply a fraction that's set by the judge or the jury of the worth of the defendant, or sometimes even the profit
that they would have received in a day, or a month, or a year. The punitive damages should be large enough to punish the defendant. So, if you're dealing with
a really wealthy defendant, then it needs to be large
enough to punish them for them. Because sometimes if you have what would seem like a large amount, if you're dealing with a
multi-billion dollar corporation, it doesn't really punish them in a way that they're
going to take notice. So, that's what William
Shatner's going after here. A day's profit to really make them feel the pain that they
inflicted on the plaintiff here. - What could be more fair than that? - What could be more fair? So fair. - My client's profit's are not relevant. The number of stores they
have is not relevant. How dare you go into that? And how dare you not shut him down? - So, whether or not the
defendant's profits are relevant would be decided long
before they get to trial. There would be motions that would lay the foundation for why a corporation's profits are
relevant to punitive damage. There would be a slew of pretrial motions to decide whether or not the profits and the punitive damages of a company are relevant to the case or not. If indeed there has
been no motion for that and there has been no back and forth between the attorneys and the judge, then it would've been incredibly improper for William Shatner to bring
that up in front of the jury. Potentially even leading to a mistrial. But what TV shows often get wrong is the mountain of paperwork
that happens before trial. All of these decisions,
all these legal questions, are settled long before you get to court. They would not have a sidebar
like what's going on here to decide, in the middle of trial, whether he's allowed to
make these arguments or not. That's totally unrealistic. - May I go off the record briefly? - Go right ahead. - Thank you, this is not
for your ears, by the way. You stupid bastard, cases rarely turn on what's legally relevant. What you have to be concerned with here is if All Shop makes $160 million of pure profit a day, a day, a jury will get wind of those numbers. - In which case we'll appeal. - Great, and do you think you'll be the lawyers to handle that appeal? When your client gets whacked
with a $50 million judgment? You're an ass, you're
an ass, you're an ass. - So, a couple things going on here. He's basically admitted that the profits of the
defendant are not relevant, not something you want to do if you are trying to get those profits in front of the jury. Probably not a good idea
to admit to the judge that they're not relevant, because the judge has a duty to make sure that no irrelevant evidence
comes before the jury. William Shatner does hint at something that is often the case, which is that the same
lawyers that tried the case are rarely the ones to take the appeal. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. There are specialists
who handle the appeal. But the opposing attorney
is absolutely right, that if he brings in
these prejudicial facts against the will of the court, then he has a dead winner on
appeal, or at least he should. Now, whether they're gonna
wanna go through the cost of going through another
trial again after the appeal, that's a bigger question, but it sounds like a big company. And they may want to go
through all that again on the idea that the plaintiff's attorneys won't wanna go through
the trial one more time, and potentially lose. So, some of that is realistic, but this whole monologue
in front of the judge, that is not gonna happen. The next clip comes from Rick and Morty. - [Narrator] You are about
to enter the courtroom of Judge Morty Durham, Jr. The people are real, the cases are real, the rulings are final. This is his courtroom. This is Judge Morty. 60-year-old inmate Rick Allen is being accused of committing murder of a fellow inmate at
Georgia Penitentiary. Mr. Allen claims that he is being setup, and that his lawyer is
requesting sexual favors in exchange for proper legal advice. - Okay, (clears throat) okay, Mr. Allen. - Right. - I believe that, I
believe that your case is, was going to be going to
trial not this Monday, but the following Monday. Do you understand that? - Yes. - Okay, I tell you, if you
need to tell me something, I want, I'll let you come
up here to the podium so you can speak into the microphone. - So my understanding is that this clip is actually a real life transcript that happened in a criminal proceeding, that the makers of Rick and Morty then set to the voices of Rick
and Morty and animated it. And it really sounds like
some of the crazy stuff that can happen in criminal proceedings. What's happening here is not uncommon. Often the defendant will not be happy with his publicly appointed attorney, and he or she will request that that attorney be either substituted, or that the defendant is allowed to just handle things on their own. And that's a thing that happens, it's called representing yourself pro se, when you represent yourself. And there's an old adage that anyone who represents themself
has a fool for a client. And the judges don't like it. You're not, generally,
gonna do a very good job, even if you've been
trained as an attorney, which most people have not. But judges hate it because
it slows things down, they really have to hold the hands of the defendants who
represent themselves. And it can really just muck things up, which I'm guessing is what happens here. - You have a right to an attorney. - This lawyer has-- - You don't have a right
to a specific attorney. - This lawyer has made
sexual advances on me. He's misrepresenting my case. He told me if, if I wanted
him to do a good job, I had to let him give me oral sex. He's had doctors-- - Oh boy. So, defendants will say
a lot of crazy things to try and get their way, and I'm guessing the attorney
did not make sexual advances. I'm thinking that this guy is just saying whatever he can to
get a different attorney. - He's had doctors at Central
State Hospital put a-- - He's had doctors at
Central State Hospital? - Put a false diagnosis on me. - Okay, I don't, you know, I know Mr. Wyatt pretty well, and I don't think he has the ability to make doctors at
Central State do anything. - Well, they did it and he's the one that had me sent down there. - Well, you know, they may have done it, but I don't think that he
had anything to do with it. - Alright, well, he won't
give me the discovery. There's things in the discovery, he's supposed to give me the incident, and told me that it was the discovery. - Okay. - They're alternating
documents that I've read. - If you want-- - Alright, so here there's a ring of truth in what the defendant is saying. The prosecution has an obligation to disclose all of their
evidence to the defendant, and that includes documentary evidence, that includes what witnesses
they're going to call against that person at trial. Gone are the days where
either the prosecution or the defense could
ambush the other side. You have to disclose all
of that ahead of time, and so what this defendant is claiming is that he didn't receive
some of that evidence, and that he wants it. And if that is indeed the case, it's probably not the case
because this guy sounds crazy, if there is something
that has been withheld the prosecution needs to
turn that over to him. Alright, so those are some of
my favorite legal TV shows. I can see some of those
situations happening in real life, but others would get
the attorneys disbarred and probably get the judges
thrown off the bench. If you enjoyed this video and would like to see
more Lawyer Reacts videos, or hear about my law school experience, click on this short playlist
that I've put together. It includes my reaction
to some of the most famous legal scenes in the movies. And please subscribe so you don't miss out on the next video. Otherwise, I'll see you in the next one. (upbeat music)
