Phone: 479-575-5358
Fax:
Email: hbrill@uark.edu
Home Page: http://law.uark.edu/faculty/brill.html
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Summary Description:

ETHICS AND THE LAWYERS OF JOHN GRISHAM:

This Continuing Legal Education program is an outgrowth of the required Professional Responsibility course. For 15 years students in my course have been required to watch a full length movie of their choice, to analyze the ethics of the lawyers and judges in the movie, and to present their analysis in whatever format or with whatever written technique they choose. The assignment counts 30% of the students' grade for the semester.

Of the approximately 50 movies selected, the choices range from the traditional classics (To Kill A Mockingbird) to recent popular movies (Runaway Jury), from international settings (Witness for the Prosecution) to regional themes (My Cousin Vinny), from dramatic (Body Heat) to comedy (Adam's Rib), from military court-martials (Breaker Morant) to domestic relations (Kramer v. Kramer). Most impressively, the students have adopted a surprising variety of techniques to present their analyses including diaries, suicide notes, police logs, Senate confirmation hearings, disciplinary hearings, speeches, newspapers and job applications.

My CLE program has excerpts from six John Grisham movies, expanding on themes in legal ethics. For example, confidentiality is developed by three clips from A Time to Kill:

1) the office conversation between the father of the victim and his lawyer; "Jake, if you were the father, what would you do?";
2) the conversation between the attorney and his wife, "Jake, Honey, you should call the sheriff;"
3) the follow-up conversation between the attorney and his wife, after the father has killed the assailants of his young daughter: "Jake Tyler Brigance, you promised me. . . Because of you, those two boys are dead and you could have prevented it.

Building on brief written CLE materials, the program features dialogue and discussion between the participants and me. The focus is on questions such as, "what would you have done?", "what options did the lawyer have?", and "what do the higher standards of the profession suggest?"

Other themes developed in the program include: solicitation, fraud on the court, perjury and fees. The adjustable length of the program ranges from 30 minutes to 2 hours.

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Program History:

I have taught Professional Responsibility since 1975, usually once, sometimes twice a year. My classes of primarily second year students have approximately 100 students (of an average graduating class size of 125). Since 1986 I have required the Movie Assignment.

The John Grisham program was developed in 2000. Although I have used portions of it in my classes at the law school, it has primarily been presented outside the law school. It has been offered at the Annual Meeting of the Arkansas Bar Association (June 2003), the Annual Meeting of the Arkansas Judicial Council (November 2004), regional bar association programs throughout the state since 2000, undergraduate classes at the University of Arkansas, Elder Hostel seminars (October 2001), and prospective law student programs. From all groups, the response has been very positive. The participation has ranged from 500 to a dozen.

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Confidential Items:

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Expanded Program Description (Optional):

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Supporting Materials:

Two documents are being e-mailed separately to Prof. Cunningham:

1) the instructions for the movie assignment

2) the written outline for "Ethics and the Lawyers of John Grisham."