How To Get Away With Murder: How To Not Practice Law

I have been looking forward to How To Get Away With Murder for a while, despite the fact that the entire premise is completely implausible. (I love Legally Blonde too.) The geniuses at Go Fug Yourself called this show Pretty Little Lawyers, and that’s so accurate! I wasn’t expecting actually serious treatment of the law, obviously, but I cannot help myself- I’m going to nitpick, because it’s fun. (I assume these complaints will be the same forever so I won’t bother doing this every week.)

The show is fun; I liked the murder-mystery aspect, and the pressure-cooker atmosphere of law school is a good place to drive your characters crazy and have them lash out. But they need to tone this shit down, because Annelise is breaking SO MANY RULES OF PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY that I can’t believe she hasn’t been hauled up before the board of bar overseers on ethics complaints. Am I supposed to root for someone who ignores ethics and rules in pursuit of getting her client off? There’s being creative and there’s being unethical, and this is the latter. You’re suppose to advocate for your client, sure, but there are rules for how to do so.

Anyway, Wes is likable, I have no complaints or real opinions about the others, I’m always happy to see Liza Weil, and the missing student looks distractingly like Aunt Jenna.

I HAVE NOTES:

1. The professor writes “How to Get Away With Murder” on the blackboard, saying that’s what she likes to call criminal law. She’s aware there are other crimes, right? We learned about those too. The non-glamorous ones like larceny and battery. Low-level stuff. If all you knew was murder you’d flunk the class.
2. Criminal law class usually starts with philosophy or mens rea, not with murder. And you read cases and cases and cases. Case studies and fact patterns are totally useful, but you don’t do that without also reading THE ACTUAL STATUTES, because you need to LEARN THE RULES.
3. Oh, sure, go the the courthouse and skip torts and property. That would go over really well with the other professors.
4. I have never known a school to hire an adjunct to teach a first-year class. Adjuncts teach stuff like e-discovery and real estate transactions, not the building blocks of legal thought.
   • Related: how could you possibly teach a class that meets three or four days a week when you have actual clients and court dates?
5. Law students don’t dress that nicely, at least not after the first day. Certainly no one wore suits. Try yoga pants and flip-flops. *eyeroll*
6. Are Annelise and her associates billing the client for time spent in class? OH HELL NO. Brainstorming with law students is probably not a good use of your client’s money, and it’s probably an ethics violation.
7. WTF kind of consent form did the client sign that allowed her attorney to make her entire enormous law class privy to the details of the case? Did the class have to sign confidentiality forms? And why is she letting them have free rein of her office, which is presumably filled with confidential information?
8. No offense to first-semester law students, but they would be NO USE. They’re finding cases with procedural details for a criminal law course? They’re set free in a law library they haven’t been taught to use? Do they even know how to brief a case?
   • Why on earth would you learn about directed verdicts without learning about standards of proof? I am not a criminal law expert by any means (I hated the class), but this seems weird. [This sentence has been edited (read: re-written) to correct for my confusion between civil and criminal procedure. Whoops! – 10/6/14]
   • What are they finding that a competent trial attorney DOESN’T ALREADY KNOW?
   • Are they even taking legal research and writing? What use are they without the whole first year, where you learn the basics? I’m not a huge defender of the way law school is structured, but even I think the material you learn in the first year is essential before you could begin to help with a case.
9. Those students are breaking the rules of professional conduct and jumping up and down on them until they’re in smithereens, and Annelise is fine with it. Um, no.
   • Calling a health care company and lying about your identity? Bad.
   • Getting emails from an employee of the victim and then lying about where they came from? Bad.
     • Besides which, “oops, we missed it” is unlikely to be an excuse the judge just waves off.
   • Sleeping with someone to get him to lie? Bad.
10. Even if Annelise doesn’t give a crap about ethics, that stuff wouldn’t be admissible! I am SURE the judge wouldn’t have admitted that email that wasn’t in the discovery files, because how is an email printout reliable? What’s the chain of custody? Is it hearsay anyway? UGH. There should AT LEAST have been a hearing.
11. WHOA, she’s advising her client to destroy evidence??? THAT’S NOT OKAY.
12. Not legal, but whoa, Annelise, don’t slut-shame Frank’s paramours. Or tell Wes something about chubby paralegals. Really? Besides, what’s wrong with contract law?
13. GIRL, don’t be offended that Wes suggests you did illegal things to win the case. YOU DID.

I’m guessing a lot of this is setup and will bother me less later (it’s fine to have law student clerks), but YEESH. On the other hand, this is SOAPY and fun so WHATEVER.