It always amazes and amuses me how lawyers are portrayed — or rather, mis-portrayed — in the movies. It’s what makes the legal profession so exciting to laymen, but we lawyers know it’s not even a tenth as outrageous a job as the exaggerated cinematic depictions. (At least mine isn’t).
Case in point: as an alternative to our Nightly Ritual, Hubby and I watched The Social Network. The second year associate at the muckety-muck big law firm, played by Rashida Jones, confides in Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) after his deposition that in her twenty months of practice as a voir dire specialist at the firm, she can tell him how a jury will react to his side of the story. She then sagely advises, based on that twenty months of practice, that he should settle the case.
“Voir dire specialist?” Hubby and I questioned in unison.
” She must have meant document review specialist.” (We chuckled at our clever insider joke).
That’s when I realized that 1) we are law geeks and 2) it is sort of cool to be part of a profession. You’re in on something that you think the rest of the world knows about, but really only a small percentage of people understand.
Today’s verdict: Maybe I should keep practicing. At least I’ll have something to laugh about.
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Well, this must be the oddest thing I have ever seen. I watched this movie when it came out and just rented it again today. My husband and I were watching and during the same part you referred to, I laughed quite a bit. 20 months, really? And the advise to “Zuckerberg” was ridiculous. The director of this movie should have known better. Simplicity of information will do you good. Anyway, I have an associate degree in paralegal and working on my bachelor degree at ASU in criminal justice and criminology and my hubby is a law student. I decided to look into becoming a trial specialist or rather, vior dire specialist (I think this term is sexy) and I came across your blog and laughed my butt off. The reason I thought of pursuing or looking into the field was because of the movie and I found your blog, BECAUSE of the movie. I just hope the irony made you laugh.
That’s simply AWESOME. Love it! Thanks for sharing that…your story is one of the reasons blogging is worth it!! Thanks for stopping by and good luck in school and as a “voir dire specialist”