Prof Jane Ching NLS https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/law/jane-ching
The tension between truth, justice and the human frailties of those seeking to uncover or obscure them in litigation lends itself to dramatic retelling. That is not to say that non-contentious legal work is entirely absent from television drama, though it tends to be used as a springboard for the plot rather than as integral to the drama itself. The Australian series Fisk is set in wills and probate work; the 1984 British film The Chain linked individual stories together through conveyancing.
In litigation, however, lawyers, police officers, and expert witnesses - especially forensic scientists (CSI, Waking the Dead), pathologists (Silent Witness), and psychologists (Cracker) - provide a rich casting seam and exciting opportunities for tension. Clients, victims, and jurors provide contrasting context and perspectives. Additional dramatic effect can be obtained by reversing roles (see, for example, the barrister-client in The Escape Artist), or where our hero becomes, temporarily, the suspect. Female, and especially Black female, police inspectors and barristers are, I suspect, more common on the screen than in statistics. Down to earth working class police officers can be pitted against elite and arrogant lawyers, for example, or class expectations challenged (as by Maxine Peake’s defiantly northern QC in Silk). The police procedural and its cousin the courtroom drama are, however, rarely combined to allow us to see, for example, that the evidence dubiously obtained is inadmissible, or the powerful detective of the first part as the humbled witness in the second. One of the reasons the second series of Broadchurch, which covered the trial of the suspect arrested at the beginning of the first series was controversial may have been that it unpicked the resolution achieved in the first series.
Frequently, perhaps because the stakes are higher, we are in the criminal courts, but notable dramas have occasionally surfaced in civil work, at least in film and where a David and Goliath dialectic can be established (Erin Brockovich, Class Action, A Civil Action). Writing as a litigation lawyer, it is easy to see the attraction to screenwriters. The police procedural and courtroom drama provide an opportunity to tell many of Booker’s seven basic plots (e.g. “overcoming the monster” or “the quest”). Indeed, Booker’s metaplot from anticipation through frustration to resolution seems to describe the litigation process, real or fictional.
In this context, however, the pragmatic dictates of budgets and the need to focus on a small cast of characters, produce tropes such as the all-knowing lawyer, the investigative pathologist and, a particular bee in my bonnet, the silent solicitor in the police station. Criminal, in which lawyers - rather than nodding ominously and making sporadic notes – actually talk, and actually defend their client’s interests, in intense scenes of police interrogation, came as a refreshing surprise.
We know that litigation-based drama is popular. We also know that, unless, like the recent series the Sixth Commandment, it is based on transcripts of an actual trial, and often even then, dramatic licence will have been taken by writers and programme makers. Specialist consultants exist as they do for other popular formats such as the hospital drama, but may not have been consulted on every point, or may have been overruled. US legal drama, whether or not it accurately even represents US legal procedure, is a strong influencer. It would be possible to entertain ourselves with a bingo scorecard (or drinking game) based on errors in English legal drama. Here would be some of my suggestions:
· The lawyer who is very unclear whether they are a barrister or a solicitor. Other legal professions rarely appear although there was, some years ago a sitcom in which one character was studying for CILEx exams. This was demonstrated by a copy of the Green Book in her bedroom.
· The silent solicitor.
· Questioning of a witness in court which is not immediately identifiable as being in chief or cross-examination. There are rules about this.
· Out of date or incorrect terminology (e.g. “witness stand”, “writ”).
· Random odd volumes of law reports or Halsbury’s on office shelves in a legal office rather than a complete set. Once you notice this you can’t stop seeing law reports as standard set dressing in offices of all kinds.
· The gavel. The gavel. Oh, the gavel. See the X (formerly Twitter) account Inappropriate gavels for the ongoing saga.
The journalist John Hyde has, reasonably, asked whether, if legal drama fosters an interest in legal issues, technical errors in this (or any other) field are so significant. He has a point. I notice and am irritated by these things because I know about them in the context of England and Wales and I am a perfectionist. My medical friends no doubt feel much the same about hospital dramas. But drama and what happens in it affects expectations of both clients and students. That is important for us to know, and to act on. In the meantime, I can play bingo at home and exploit my ignorance by enjoying foreign legal drama, while acknowledging that it may have flaws of its own. Will there be another series of Extraordinary Attorney Woo?
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