Virginia Lawyers Weekly

The Academy Awards were handed out last night, long after this issue went to bed. But here’s a look at Web sites that are dedicated to movies about lawyers. And there is a tie to the Oscars: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s bestseller, is generally considered to be the best lawyer movie ever. It featured an Oscar-winning turn by Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. “My Cousin Vinny” is generally considered the best lawyer comedy; Marisa Tomei carted home one of the golden statuettes as Best Supporting Actresss for her work in that 1992 film as Lisa, Vinny Gambino’s long-suffering girlfriend and expert witness.

What about other lawyer flicks?

The ABA List. The American Bar Association weighed in last summer with an ABA Journal cover story on “The 25 Greatest Legal Movies.” “Mockingbird” is of course represented, but so are “12 Angry Men,” “Judgment at Nuremberg,” “Anatomy of a Murder,” “The Verdict” and other biggies.
http://abajournal.com/magazine/the_25_greatest_legal_movies/

The AFI Courtroom Drama List. The American Film Institute last year published 10 “Top 10” lists, cataloguing the 10 best films of a number of genres, including sci-fi, gangster pics and epics, among others. The AFI included “courtroom dramas,” with movies such as “A Few Good Men” and “Kramer vs. Kramer” getting their nod.
http://www.afi.com/10top10/crdrama.html

The U Toronto List. Okay, you’re staring at your Netflix queue and you don’t know what to add. You might be interested in a lawyer movie. Thanks to the law library at the University of Toronto, you can peruse a list of 80-some law-related movies. Two caveats: This list, while quite good, hasn’t been updated since 2004 and the nexus for some movies is a little thin (For example, “Wild Things” makes it for Bill Murray’s turn as a lawyer in that one; “All of Me” merits inclusion because Steve Martin’s character is an attorney).
http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/law-505/movies/atozlist.htm

Getting Serious About This Stuff. If you want to move past the Friday-night Netflix quandary and take a more disciplined approach to this topic, mouse over to a site run by the law library at the University of Texas for its “Law in Popular Culture Collection.” You’ll find movie lists and even pictures of posters from lawyer movies. There’s a bibliography with law- and lawyer-related books and articles (For example, if you’ve ever wondered why lawyers get a bad rap in the movies, read the law review article they have entitled “Bad Lawyers in the Movies” http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/nova/asimow24.htm)
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/index.html

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