A Dislike of Cynical Lawyers

I closed my last post, a review of All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards, by stating the solicitor as sleuth, Harry Devlin, frustrated me.

Harry is a lawyer I found hard to like as a character. I start with a predisposition to liking lawyer characters since I have practiced law for 43 years.

I can appreciate a lawyer who chooses to handle the cases, mainly criminal, of those struggling through life, especially economically. I have represented many people in such circumstances.

What frustrates me is that Harry manifests a cynicism that stereotypes his practice. For most accused there is little more to be done than to seek a just sentence yet every defence lawyer has represented accused who were guilty but are found not guilty in a trial. It is Harry’s responsibility, having chosen criminal defence practice, to represent the clearly guilty and unrepentant.

By contrast is a fictional English lawyer of a generation earlier, Rumpole in the fiction of Robert Mortimer. The blustering barrister is an acknowledged Old Bailey hack but still an optimist. He recognizes the Timson family business is the commission of modest crimes. They have carried on that business for multiple generations. Yet Rumpole is not cynical in his assessment of the Timson’s but represents them with all the skill and guile he can muster from his decades in the courts.

I am sure Harry represents his clients well. He appears conscientious in the book. Yet he does not really see them as individuals. They are an assembly line to be processed as efficiently as he can through the legal system.

Rumpole sees every client as an individual. Each accused is not a file number for him but a person deserving of specific attention.

It will not be a surprise that I strive to see the accused who retain me as individuals. I try hard not to stereotype them.

In Canadian legal fiction I see Robert Rotenberg’s lawyers in his books set in the Toronto legal community creating Crown prosecutors and defence counsel who represent people not file numbers.

Nancy Parrish could not spend the long hours needed for a major trial were her clients almost anonymous to her.

It is harder to maintain focus on the individual in Harry’s practice where there is a daily stream of accused in contrast to books where the lawyer is dealing with a single prominent trial.

Mickey Haller, especially in the earliest books of the series by Michael Connelly where he is constantly moving from court to court in his Lincoln to deal with multiple accused every day, does not succumb to cynicism. Each of his clients stays an individual and Haller continues to be an optimist.

Edwards can certainly shape his solicitor as best fits the story he is writing but I will never like a cynical lawyer.  They exist in life but there are fewer in real life than in fiction.

I hope in future books of the series Harry is less of a cynic.

I expect it is easier, even expected, in crime noir fiction that cynicism is prevalent among the characters. I hope, but doubt, future authors of legal fiction will write about criminal defence lawyers who look forward to each day in the criminal courts for they are working hard to achieve justice. Those readers who react cynically to that comment should consider whether they have lost respect for the person accused of crime in criminal fiction.

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Edwards, Martin - (2018) - All the Lonely People