Legal News

What Does ?Michael Clayton? Say About Law-Firm Life?

By Dan Slater

Two weeks ago I came out of the building . . . . I have exactly 38 minutes to get to La Guardia, and I’m dictating — there’s this frantic associate running to keep up . . . . I looked back at the building and had the most stunning moment of clarity . . . . I realized, Michael, at that moment, that I had emerged — as I have done nearly every day for the past 28 years of my life — not through the portals of our huge and powerful law firm, but rather from . . . an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison — the ammo — the defoliant — necessary for even larger and more dangerous organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. . . .

– Tom Wilkinson as Arthur Edens in “Michael Clayton”

The above — an excerpt from the opening monologue of “Michael Clayton,” the law-firm thriller starring George Clooney that’s up for seven Oscars this Sunday — pretty much sums up the movie’s take on law-firm life: dark. We found ourself reconsidering these lines while reading yesterday’s DVD review of the film in Slate.

Patrick Radden Keefe, a JD-turned-journo, penned this detailed and thoughtful analysis of the movie’s depiction of modern law firms and the lawyers who inhabit them. In the article, entitled “White Shoe, Black Hat,” Keefe calls the movie an “indictment of the mercenary universe of white-shoe firms and a devastating — and unusually accurate — look at the demoralized lives of the lawyers who work for them.”

For those LB’ers who’ve yet to view the film, we won’t spoil it, but here’s the basic plot: Wilkinson plays the partner in charge of defending a chemical company, U/North, in a protracted toxic tort litigation. But, as illustrated in the excerpt above, when the movie opens he’s stopped taking his meds and has begun to unravel, threatening to turn over documents that incriminate his client. When Clooney’s Michael Clayton, who Keefe calls an improbable 17th-year associate, is sent to rein in the Wilkinson character, Clooney reminds him: “You are a senior litigating partner at one of the largest, most respected law firms in the world.”

“I’m an accomplice,” Wilkinson snaps.

Meanwhile, U/North’s general counsel, Karen Crowder, the movie’s other neurotic lawyer, played by Tilda Swinton, is forced to take dramatic steps to ensure that her company steers clear of trouble.

In an interview in the movie, Crowder, who’s afflicted by panic attacks, is asked how she reconciles the demanding life of a lawyer with her personal life. She responds, “Who needs balance? When you really enjoy what you do . . . . there’s your balance.” The Wilkinson character has a different take on work-life balance as he tabulates the time he’s devoted to the U/North case: “Six years. Four hundred depositions. A hundred motions. Five changes of venue. Eighty-four thousand documents in discovery . . . . 12 percent of my life.”

In his review, Keefe concludes: “In Michael Clayton, as in real life, the firm doesn’t employ people so much as consume them, creating a culture in which personal or familial obligations always take second place to work . . . . Whatever the explanation, Michael Clayton offers an only slightly exaggerated portrait of a profession undergoing a kind of slow-motion existential crisis. It does so at a time when in the real world, midlevel associates are dropping out in droves.”

LBers, any thoughts? Is the movie’s cynical view of the world of big law firms justified or overblown?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).