Fictional Attorney of the Month: Herr Huld

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In Franz Kafka's The Trial, Josef K. is arrested. But he doesn't know why--he's not sure who's arresting him, where they're taking him, or what he did. Indeed, the reader never learns of the crime that is at the center of the story.

But things don't look up for Josef K., as the farce of a trial only grows worse when he is given his attorney, Herr Huld (seen left as played by Jason Robards in a BBC adaptation). The lawyer is the epitome of everything a lawyer should not be. Huld is long-winded, arrogant, and overconfident. He explains that the case is difficult and writing a brief will be a challenge--but he never completes the brief as he spends more time describing how hard it will be than working on it. And Huld constantly brags about his vast network of connections with influential members of the legal system, which, he believes, are truly the most important things the lawyer does.

Over time, the client slowly learns that the case is quite hopeless as the system is manifestly unjust. And it is made worse by a lawyer whose other clients have never achieved success. One of Huld's clients, Block, describes to Josef that his attorneys is principally responsible for his financial and professional ruin over the last several years. Huld is the epitome of a bad lawyer in all aspects of his work--not simply poor at his job, but unethical, a terrible counselor, and malicious.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Troy

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Jill Sprecher's 13 Conversations About One Thing is a favorite film of mine, a deeply underappreciated and thoughtful tale from 2001. It is a Möbius strip of a movie, thirteen vignettes that wrap around themselves. The conversations may well be about happiness, but that's simply how I prefer to view the movie

Matthew McConaughey is Troy, a wealthy attorney who boasts about his success and mocks anyone who would ascribe anything to luck or chance. But fortune thinks differently, and Troy suddenly loses control of this carefully-constructed life. Without spoiling too much, he faces legal and ethical dilemmas, followed by a spiral of depression and despair.

McConaughey's excellent performance works wonderfully with a careful script. After an incident, a fellow attorney asks him if something's wrong, and Troy answers nothing's wrong, he only had three drinks last night, just two watered-down drinks, and the facts and the denial are put on obvious display. And as anonymous as a powerful attorney without a last name might be, he's this month's Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Mitch Grinder

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Rob Lowe, an actor, plays Dean Sanderson, an actor, who once played the role of Mitch Grinder, the star of the melodramatic legal television series, The Grinder. Known for his enterprising legal prowess, dramatic courtroom outbursts, and signature line, "Grinder rests," Dean has retired as the show ended its television run.

He moves back to Idaho to live with his brother, Stewart, who is an actual attorney working at the law firm their father started. Stewart, played by Fred Savage, is the straight-laced attorney driven mad by his brother's theatrical antics. Dean now wants to play a role in the law firm, because--well, he did play one on television, and he was quite good at it.

Dean constantly falls back into his role as Mitch Grinder, believing that he, and the American legal system, operate as if television were reality. The sheer self-awareness of the absurdity of legal fiction is enough to make Mitch Grinder this month's Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Ben Matlock

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Andy Griffith is perhaps best known for playing the folksy sheriff of Mayberry. But he spent a decade late in his career portraying Ben Matlock, a folksy defense attorney whose clever investigations inevitably (well, usually) lead to the acquittal of his clients.

Apart from a love for hot dogs and light gray suits, Matlock relied on a small team of trusted advisors to investigate claims. He had a sense of humor and a knack for ferreting out the truth in all situations. And his winning courtroom demeanor helped him secure many a confession on the witness stand itself.

The series Matlock hearkens back to tidier television series, where right and wrong were more clearly identified than they often are today. But maybe that's a bit of Andy Griffith, too--nothing quite like a clean, honest attorney intent on finding the truth in all.

2015 Fictional Attorneys of the Month

January: Evangeline Whedon

February: Atticus Finch

March: Serjeant Buzfuz

April: Clair Huxtable

May: Vinny Gambini

June: The King of Hearts

July: Rudy Baylor

August: Judge Thatcher

September: Peter Banning

October: Carson Drew

November: Matt Murdock

2014 Fictional Attorneys of the Month

2013 Fictional Attorneys of the Month

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Matt Murdock

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Matt Murdock is a typical New Yorker, until he's blinded by a radioactive substance falling from a car as he saves a man from an oncoming truck. He develops supernatural senses and sonar. He crusades under the name Daredevil, or the Man Without Fear.

Murdock attended Columbia Law School. He and longtime friend Franklin "Foggy" Nelson founded Nelson & Murdock, a small law firm dedicated to serving the public--and, of course, Daredevil might act where the law could not reach.

The "Trial of the Century" story is one of the most significant story arcs involving attorneys in comic books. Hector Ayala, the White Tiger, is found at a crime scene where he unsuccessfully fought some gang members and is left with a dead police officer at his feet. The White Tiger is innocent; Murdock takes the case; and a lengthy courtroom battle, including evidence objections and witness examination, highlights the story.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Carson Drew

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Nancy Drew is nearly synonymous with juvenile mystery fiction. The classic children's books written under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene have remained influential over 80 years since their first publication.

Nancy is a teenager who helps her father solve mysteries. That's because her father, Carson Drew, is an attorney, who often needs help with his cases.

Carson is a widower, widely respected in their town and deeply devoted to his daughter. Depending on the version of the Drew family, he was once a prosecutor and now handles cases in private practice. He trusts her judgment and protects her when she's in trouble--of course, she's helped rescue him from danger on more than one occasion, too. (Apparently, kidnapping a lawyer is a thing.) He travels often for work, and his practice doesn't simply involve criminal work--his handling of estates is a recurring practice in the book.

Several film and television adaptations have been attempted, but none very successful, including the 2007 film adaptation featuring Tate Donovan, as seen above. But the legacy of this father in juvenile fiction makes him the Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Peter Banning

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Robin Williams portrays Peter Banning, a successful corporate attorney visiting family in London when mysterious events disrupts his otherwise-orderly routine. So opens Hook, a 1991 retelling of the story of Peter Pan, where Peter has left the lost boys in Neverland, grown up, and become about as far from childlike ways as can be imagined.

Mr. Banning has forgotten this past and is rudely reintroduced to it as his children are kidnapped and taken away, interrupting his "vacation," or, really, his attempts to work remotely in the early 90s with attorneys across the Atlantic. He is about as humorless as one might expect an overworked corporate lawyer to be. He introduces himself to Captain Hook as "Peter Banning, Attorney at Law." (That's a real sign of confidence.) He caps a series of insults with Rufio, interim leader of the Lost Boys, with the closing remark, "Don't mess with me man, I'm a lawyer!"

But it's perhaps the restyling of Shakespeare's cry about killing lawyers that is the most memorable moment of this lawyer being dropped into Neverland and experiencing a world that is not as impressed with his credentials and qualifications as he is. And he's this month's Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Judge Thatcher

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Mark Twain's most memorable characters in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are usually the children. But Judge Thatcher, Becky's father, serves as an important part of Huck's life.

Early in Huck Finn, Huck decides to hand his fortune over to Judge Thatcher to keep it away from his father. At first the judge is confused, but finally concludes that Huck should hand it over "for a consideration"--one dollar. When Huck's father arrives, "His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money, if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it."

It may be that Judge Thatcher isn't a very good lawyer--a contract exchanging $6000 for $1 probably wouldn't last, and his best litigation tactic seems to be delay. But his responsibility for and affection toward Huck make him this month's Fictional Attorney of the Month.

Fictional Attorney of the Month: Rudy Baylor

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In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola directed a cinematic version of John Grisham's novel, The Rainmaker. The all-star cast is led by Matt Damon as Rudy Baylor, a newly minted lawyer from Memphis who escaped a life of poverty and lands the case of a lifetime.

Rudy takes a job as an ambulance chaser--literally visiting victims in the hospital to try to get clients--before running into Deck Shifflet, played by Danny DeVito. Rudy finds an insurance case involving Donny Ray, a 22-year-old dying of leukemia whose claims had been denied. Deck helps him out, and the two take on a powerful insurance company and its suite of attorneys.

The film has a number of roles and smaller story lines that slowly intertwine in Rudy's development. It offers not simply a very realistic look at the hard life of a novice plaintiff's attorney scrapping for fringe cases and confronting a powerful and slippery defense team, but also the ethical and moral questions that a new attorney confronts in his own life and in the practice of law generally. It is not exactly an uplifting film for the young lawyer. But Rudy's tenacity, skill, and introspection are worth of thoughtful examination.