Legal dramas and studying law: Reality vs TV
Has How To Get Away With Murder inspired you to study law? If so, you might want to read this blog post on the fact vs fiction of a legal career. Verdict? Netflix is definitely guilty of falsehoods!
The majority of it isn’t about criminal law
Hollywood legal dramas need high emotion and high stakes. 9 times out of 10 this means we see criminal lawyers in film and TV, where the facts can be grizzly, and the consequences (prison) are dire. But this is just one very small area of law in an otherwise very diverse profession with lots of different specialisms. Private law, for example, can cover anything from commercial transactions (check out Suits) to consumer protection and family law (check out Kramer v Kramer). Newer and exciting specialisms include areas like energy law, media and information technologies, and even space law! Some of these topics are mandatory ‘core’ subjects in a degree (e.g., contract and tort) but many universities offer a diverse range of optional modules in newer, developing areas.
Because of this diversity, if you study law you’ll often touch on aspects of other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, criminology, and politics. This is intellectually demanding but can also make it a great choice for people who are curious about the social sciences more broadly. Most people don’t choose their specialism until much further on in their degree or indeed when they enter the legal job market, so in the early days it’s important to stay open and curious to areas that might interest you.
Important note: absolutely none of these distinctions will matter to your friends and family who will still ask for free legal advice on everything and anything once you begin your studies!
You don’t (always) have to argue with people
Most legal dramas will take place in a court room, with dramatic and confrontational arguments between lawyers, judges, witnesses etc. Some people will thrive on this prospect, but for lots of us this adversarial environment won’t be appealing, or can even trigger anxiety. Usually, the courtroom isn’t anywhere near as sensational or surprising in reality as it is on TV. It can take months or years for cases to get to court, thousands of hours of discovery and document production and even then, many cases will settle before they see the inside of a courtroom. In this respect, Better Call Saul is a more accurate depiction of a class action lawsuit that begins at the outset of the series, and to date still hasn’t been resolved!
In any case, most lawyers won’t choose to go into litigation or spend much of their time in a courtroom (even litigators spend at least 50% of their week at a desk). Instead, most areas of law are transactional, which mostly consist of drafting or reviewing documents and negotiating (rather than arguing) with other people. So, if you find you’re more of a bookish person with an attention to detail, law can be a very good fit for you.
Law school is teaching you how to think like a lawyer, not how to be a lawyer
This is an idiom I’ve heard throughout my legal education and it’s true that most skills about how to be a lawyer are not taught during your undergraduate (or even masters degree). Many of the practical skills we ‘see’ lawyers in film and TV doing (e.g., client-based skills) are usually reserved for further education through a diploma (usually required for legal practice) or even in the early days of your legal career. For the most part, law is still studied by lots of reading of legislation, cases, theories, and textbooks, and writing essays and exams. And importantly, unlike in How To Get Away With Murder it’s definitely not normal (at least in Scotland) for teachers to ‘cold call’ you to test your ability to think on your feet, or throw you out of class for getting an answer wrong!
Lots of universities have started to offer more practical components to their legal courses and it’s worth considering if this is something that interests you when choosing a university. Mooting, for example, where students pretend act in a hypothetical courtroom scenario, may be offered at select universities, and might be helpful to understand how legal arguments are formulated and to learn legal etiquette. Other universities offer select internship opportunities with affiliate, local firms over the summer, or sit-ins on ‘legal clinics’ to get an idea of what client-based work looks like.
But not learning how to be a lawyer isn’t necessarily a drawback of a legal education – if anything, it makes it a much more flexible and transferrable degree that can be used outside the traditional lawyering career path. Many graduates will choose to pursue lawyer-adjacent careers in research, policy making, or the civil service. Paralegal work, more-accurately-than-most depicted in Suits and Daredevil, is also an increasingly popular route.
You don’t have to join the ‘rat race’
Some of the most iconic film and TV lawyers are ambitious, tenacious, and at times, arrogant (read: Harvey Specter, Howard Hamlin etc.). And it’s true that the profession does have a (largely unfounded!) reputation for attracting the power-hungry and dispassionate. But unlike the ancient, demon-worshipping lawyers in Angel’s Wolfram & Heart, most law students, teachers, and lawyers in practice, are a much more peaceable and sedate lot. Collaborative research and working in groups is a mainstay of legal education, which quickly roots out anyone who’s too individualist.
However, it is true that where traineeships are concerned, and especially if you’re looking to work in a larger, commercial firm, this can be a highly competitive career to break into. It’s also layered with lots of hidden expectations that aren’t always obvious until it becomes time to apply for those jobs. Unfortunately, lots of the work experience that appeals to potential employers still relies on unpaid internships and being able to afford the extra costs of getting a practice diploma. It can also rely on assumptions that you (and your family) are able to be portable for your job, and travel or even relocate in another area, or that you’re able to work very long hours. Not only is this deeply problematic, but for many of us, it’s totally prohibitive. If you think this is a career for you, it’s worth taking advice early and often throughout your legal education.
On that note, it’s another sad reality of a legal career that there is a lack of diversity, and it does tend to be the domain of white, middle-to-upper class men, particularly at senior levels. This absolutely shouldn’t deter anyone from being a legal trailblazer, but is definitely worth bearing in mind in case you need extra support or mentorship early in your career.
Summing up
When it comes to legal dramas, it’s best to take them with a ‘pinch of salt’. Unsurprisingly, the common theme running throughout this blog is that Hollywood tends to portray only the most glamourous and sensational aspects of a legal career – as it does with everything of course! But if you’re a first-generation student without any reference for working in law, this can give a distorted impression of what it’s like in reality. I hope this post has given a flavour of the key differences between law in reality vs TV, or at the very least inspired some new additions to peoples’ ‘to watch’ list!
Written by volunteer Amy T
