MovieChat Forums > The Devil's Advocate (1997) Discussion > Lawyers, what are your thoughts on this ...

Lawyers, what are your thoughts on this movie?

posted 3 years ago by MikeHunt12345 (786)
3 replies | jump to latest

I have seen lawyers talk about it on YouTube, but the only negative things they said about it was that some parts were inaccurate. I haven't seen anyone say it was wrong how Kevin was portrayed as a bad person for doing his job. I feel like I must be missing something, because I can't think of what he did wrong. Although I'm not an expert on this, and I haven't seen the movie for a while.

From what I remember, he defends clients he believes to be guilty, and wins the cases. I don't see anything wrong with that. Everyone is entitled to a fair trial. And if there's reasonable doubt, the person should be acquitted, even if it seems like they're probably guilty. Just because someone seems like they're probably guilty, doesn't mean they are. The justice system is based the idea that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. Just imagine how dangerous it would be if all lawyers stopped defending all clients who seemed like they were probably guilty.

You could say similar things about other movies that portray lawyers as bad guys, e.g. Liar Liar.

[–] Boricanator (1369) 2 years ago

The biggest issue is Kevin putting a witness he knew was lying. That is illegal and unethical.

Other than that, he was doing a good job as a lawyer.

The real sin was not taking care of his wife and letting her fall apart.

[–] stickman38 (3016) 2 years ago

I'm not a lawyer but about 10 years ago, I served as a juror in an attempted murder case. Two guys got into a fight and one of them "allegedly" pulled out a gun and shot the other.

The attorney for the accused put up a very good argument in this man's defense, I was pretty much convinced it was someone else in the vicinity that pulled out a gun. But the man was guilty and eventually confessed. He was also up for an armed robbery charge and decided to just take a deal.

They only gave him 5 years. I couldn't believe it, 5 years for nearly taking someone's life.

Anyhow, I just wanted to mention this since you bought up the the justice system. It's not perfect because bad guys do get away with awful crimes and innocent people do get accused and convicted but I'd still take our system over just about any other.

TDA is a good movie too...

[–] fc31 (4562) 2 years ago

I think you misunderstood.

The political system, including liberal democracy, division of powers and justice system are set up due to industrialization, basically during the era of kings and queens, the wealthy merchants could be imprisoned on trumped up charges so lords could rob them.

When merchants funded revolutionists overthrew the monarchy they set up a system to protect themselves, so they can not be falsely convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Justice system reflects that, that is why being a lawyer is one of the privileged professions, and they swore to fight for their clients, not justice, even if they know their clients are guilty. Their clients' confession of crimes to them is protected by privilege.

So the justice system is set up to protect wealthy industrialists and merchants.

But poor people have lawyers too, you say, provided free by the state. Well, those cases are mostly unprofitable, smart lawyers would try to get rid of those cases as quickly as possible. And the best way to do that is to ask their clients to plea guilty for reduced sentences, that way these cases can be concluded in days, even hours, judges just have to hand out sentences. Otherwise if it goes to trial it could take months, even years.

From what I read about 20% of inmates in prison are people did not commit the crimes they were in prison for, but plead guilty anyway, most of those people are poor.

So you tell me, are lawyers bad guys?