Rapoport on How Lawyers Behave: the Hollywood Effect

Speaking of Nancy Rapoport (Univ. of Houston, going to UNLV), as Jeff just did on their B-School posts, she has now posted on SSRN’s Law & Soc’y: Legal Profession her 2000 article, published in Notre Dame’s legal ethics journal.   The title is “Dressed for Excess: How Hollywood Affects the Professional Behavior of Lawyers,” and the abstract is:

This article discusses two related points: first, that the way in which movies portray lawyers shapes how clients view effective/ineffective lawyer behavior, and second, that the portrayal also helps lawyers to forget appropriate professional behavior.

Later in the paper Rapoport describes such inappropriateness as including unethical behavior learned from movies, coldness and assertiveness, and a rule-boxed lack of emotional growth (despite the title I did not find a discussion about dressing appropriately).  She particularly discusses The Verdict, The Devil’s Advocate, and My Cousin Vinnie, and seems to treat the latter as a guilty pleasure. ‘The two youths….’   [Alan Childress]