Throwback to 2007
posted by Sarah Waldeck
On the heels of posts about television legal dramas by Jonathan Siegel and Jon Ip, consider The Good Wife, now airing on CBS. (I haven’t yet watched this week’s episode, so no spoilers here.) The show is mostly about a wife dealing with the very public revelation that her elected-official husband frequented prostitutes. This storyline is good and the reason I’m still watching. But Alicia is an associate at a Chicago law firm and quite a bit of the show takes place there.
I’d been trying to figure out why The Good Wife feels so dated, even though Alicia’s family is a victim of the 24-hour news cycle and her kids are extremely wired. Then it hit me—the law firm is way too pre-2008. The associates are given a stern lecture about needing to increase billable hours. Where’s the angst about the viability of billable hours and the future of the law firm business model? Moreover, doesn’t the lecture mean that the firm has excess work and is just lacking someone who will step up and do it? There’s a passing reference to the firm hiring more associates than it will need over the long term, but where are the rescinded offers and the cancelled summer program? The writers need to start reading Above the Law and borrowing liberally.
Granted, television rarely provides a realistic look at how law firms really work. (See Ally McBeal.) I do hope, however, that The Good Wife doesn’t inspire too many would-be law students. These attorneys are way, way too comfortable.
October 14, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Posted in: Culture
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Responses (2)
Gwynne - October 16, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Apparently you haven’t actually been living in the large law firm of today. While there’s plenty of stuff being written, mostly by folks outside law firms (including some clients) questioning the future of the billable hour, INSIDE it’s business as usual. If anything, the emphasis on producing ever more billable hours is FAR FAR greater today than it was even 5 or 10 years ago, And no, that doesn’t mean the firm has “excess” work and is looking for someone to step up and do it. It means that the partners are seeing their profit margin being squeezed, that the firm probably doesn’t have enough work and is leaning on folks to go get more, and that the law firm is looking for folks, especially associates (who won’t get much of the “profit” pie) to find and produce more PRODUCT aka “billable hours”. Personally, I find Alicia’s law firm to be very realistic.
Sarah Waldeck - October 18, 2009 at 9:52 am
To be clear, I did not mean to suggest that billable hours are unimportant these days. What strikes me about the show is that I haven’t seen any moment that acknowledges the Great Recession and the effect it is having on law firms. Each of the firm-related conversations between Alicia and her colleagues could have been plucked from a show that was written in 2007 or earlier. I still haven’t watched last week’s episode, however, so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised when I do.
Sarah Waldeck
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