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CHANGING LANES: LAW FIRMS IN THE PITS
By Michael Asimow
In an observation that stuck
with me, one of the Yippies (perhaps Jerry Rubin) remarked that
the courts are the toilets of America. In the movies, big law
firms are the toilets of the law. Changing Lanes is only
the latest in a long line of movies that ascribe every sort of
personal and professional evil to big firms and the lawyers that
profit from them.
 In
a recent article, I discussed the history of law firms in the
movies. Beginning with the small firms trashed in such films
as Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, filmmakers have
seldom deviated from portraying law firms as profoundly wicked.
(Michael Asimow, Embodiment of Evil: Law Firms in the Movies,
48 UCLA Law Review 1339). Since The Verdict in 1982, a
line of films including (but not limited to) The Firm, Philadelphia,
Class Action, Regarding Henry, Liar Liar, The Rainmaker, From
the Hip, A Civil Action, and Devil's Advocate represent law
firms and big firm lawyers as personally repulsive, greedy, unethical,
and utterly without any redeeming social value. Solo lawyers
in the movies of the last two decades are pretty bad, but lawyers
in law firms are truly the pits. (John Grisham's mega-best selling
books make the same point--law firms are always arch-villains
in Grisham's books).
The venomously negative portrayal
of law firms in the movies is no accident. For more than thirty
years, the Harris poll has sought information about the public
approval of the leadership of various institutions. These polls
show that the leadership of law firms is the most distrusted
institution in America. They are at the very bottom of the list,
easily topped by such normally suspect institutions as the leadership
of labor unions, big business, the federal government, or the
military. Indeed, Harris remarked that the 1997 numbers for law
firms were the lowest number recorded for any institution over
the thirty-year period of the poll. Popular culture always reflects
the general attitudes of society, and the public's intense distaste
for law firms is accurately reflected in film. Indeed, Changing
Lanes is one of the most effective anti-big firm movie ever
made.
In the film, Gavin Banek (Ben
Affleck) is a junior partner at a big Manhattan firm and son-in-law
of senior partner Stephen Delano (Sydney Pollack). One morning,
Banek has a minor traffic accident with Doyle Gipson (Samuel
L. Jackson). Both men were rushing to court--Banek to litigate
an issue critical to his law firm about a charitable trust, Gipson
to represent himself in a child custody proceeding that threatens
to strip him of joint custody of his kids.
Banek acts like a total jerk,
leaving Gipson stranded on the highway, but Banek also accidentally
drops a critical document that Gipson picks up. The accident
has some very negative consequences for both men and it touches
off a cycle of revenge moves by each of them that make the situation
much worse. While this drama could have been trite, violent and
wholly formulaic, in fact it isn't; the script and direction
are excellent and the actors (particularly Pollack--who directed
The Firm!) are outstanding. The film overall is quite
good--which is why its portrayal of the law firm is so deadly.
What do we learn about law
firms from this film? Well, first, both Banek and Delano are
cheating on their wives. The wives know all about it but continue
their marriages because they like the money and status. To get
even with Gipson, who spitefully won't return the document, Banek
hires a computer hacker to ruin Gipson's credit by entering a
false bankruptcy onto the records. Later he visits the school
where Gipson's children go and tells them that Gipson plans to
kidnap his kids. That's the kind of people that work at big law
firms. (Granted, Gipson is doing some pretty bad things to Banek
too.)
The issue that Banek was litigating
concerned a power of appointment issued by Dunn, a wealthy man
who is now dead. The power stripped control over a large charitable
trust (benefiting the children of New York) from its previous
board of directors and transferred it to Delano's law firm. Dunn's
granddaughter, on behalf of the prior board, is challenging the
power of appointment. In fact, the power of appointment was procured
by Banek when Dunn was clearly incompetent; Dunn had no idea
what he was signing. Since then, Delano and his partners have
looted millions of dollars from the trust. Banek lost the original
power of appointment at the traffic accident and the judge makes
it clear that without the original document, she will rule against
Delano's firm.
Hey, no problem. After Delano
finishes his temper tantrum, another partner suggests a way out.
They can use Dunn's original signature from another document
and submit a forged power of appointment to the court. When Banek
balks at this, his wife pleads with him to go along with the
fraud. She observes that their life style rests entirely on Banek's
status at the firm, which will be severely jeopardized if the
Dunn trust case is lost because of his carelessness. So, in short,
we learn that big-firm lawyers cheat their way into power, enrich
themselves by stealing money from kids, and engage in criminal
forgery to cover up their wrongdoing. Their offices are gorgeously
decorated, but they are deeply and irredeemably corrupt.
In a beautifully written scene
near the end of the film, Banek interviews an idealistic young
law school grad who wants to work for the firm. The applicant
talks about the grandeur of the law. Banek hires the guy, but
tells him that he'll be revising his opinion about the law pretty
quickly. Maybe in about an hour. In another scene, Delano agrees
that the firm makes money from stealing and fraud, but it also
does pro bono work in death penalty cases; hopefully, he says,
the good they do outweighs the bad. But we know it doesn't come
close.
Changing Lanes is a much more effective hit piece
against law firms than films like The Firm or The Devil's
Advocate. The Firm involved an apparently respectable
law firm that fronted for the Mafia and killed any lawyers who
wanted to leave. In The Devil's Advocate, the managing
partner of a big firm was Satan himself and the other lawyers
were demons from hell. Liar Liar and From the Hip
involved law firm partners that were clowns and buffoons. Nobody
could take any of this seriously. But Changing Lanes seems
very real when it describes law firm misdeeds; the great acting
really puts the point across. The law office scenes resonate
beautifully. I rank Changing Lanes right up there with
David Mamet's brilliant script in The Verdict, in which
Ed Concannon's firm resorts to every filthy trick in the book
to derail Frank Galvin's medical malpractice suit. Concannon
(James Mason) justifies it by saying that he gets paid all that
money not to do his best, but to win.
We can always learn a lot about
the public's attitudes and beliefs by studying popular culture.
The public dislikes lawyers but it detests big law firms. Films
like Changing Lanes accurately reflect that view and may
well intensify it. Law firms have a long, long way to go to rebuild
their image in the eyes of the public.
Posted: May 14, 2002
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