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"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".
—Dick the Butcher, Henry VI Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers!
Lawyers other than the main characters are typically unlikeable, cynical, slimy characters, even more so corporate ones. The slimy opposing lawyer who attempts to deconstruct his opponent's case and to reveal the other party's Freudian Excuse. Lawyers come in various degrees of oiliness, but the worst will actually seem to know their client is guilty and act as though they just love seeing guilty people go free - or have simply accepted that the guilty parties usually have plenty of money. If the main character is poor, the trial may turn into a David Versus Goliath scene, especially where there Frivolous Lawsuit rears its ugly head.
A particularly annoying trope, because the people who write these characters seem to have forgotten why defence attorneys exist in the first place, and why they defend even people that they know are guilty. Their goal is to make sure that, if their client is found guilty, then the prosecutor better have damn well proven it.
"But doesn't arguing that a person you know is guilty is not guilty go against everything good and decent?", you may ask. Well, the concept is simple. If a court can find a guilty person to be guilty without sufficient proof... it can find an innocent person guilty using the same method. Not that this works perfectly in practice, but I think we can all agree that we'd rather be tried by a real-life court system than the one from Phoenix Wright.
In reality, a defence attorney only knows what their client tells them, and if the client reveals privately that they are full-on guilty, it is usually an attempt to lessen their sentence instead of still demanding a walk. The defence lawyer advising the defendant to plead guilty happens a lot less in fiction than it does in real life.
Of course, it's not much of a "drama" if the opponent isn't villainous and unlikable, is it?
Remember: The Amoral Attorney, though an odious strawman, is competent. This trope is also specifically related to defence attorneys — the equivalent on the plaintiff's side is an Ambulance Chaser. Note also that the Amoral Attorney, although often unethical, isn't necessarily corrupt; being lawyers, they don't have to break the law to get what they want, preferring their knowledge of the law's limits and loopholes. A very successful one is almost by definition also a Magnificent Bastard. A variation on the Amoral Attorney occurs when the lawyer has some big picture ideal they are working for (a "cause lawyer", in parlance) but are willing to cut any corner to get there.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In Death Note, one of the eventual owners of the note is the lawyer Teru Mikami, who became a prosecutor to combat evil after being horribly bullied in the past. It is unknown whether or not he is an Amoral Attorney, but considering he uses a magical notebook to kill hundreds of people, and is happy with his mother dying because she wasn't "on his side", it's very likely he is.
- Mikami might be a subversion, since despite being a fairly horrible (not to mention insane) person, it's never suggested that he's anything other than honorable and competent when it comes to his job.
- Considering Mikami's personal beliefs concerning the ideas of Right & Wrong, he is far less of an Amoral Attorney and A LOT MORE of a Knight Templar in outlook.
Comic Books
- Two-Face was a lawyer in Batman. But he was actually a good one. Funny, huh?
- And at one point successfully defends Batman in a court where the judge and the prosecution are the same person... also Two-Face.
- Shark-man lawyer Mr. "Frenzy" Fischmann in Top Ten is a prime example. When one of his clients commits suicide in police custody, all he cares about is his fee.
- Averted in the Astro City story "Knock Wood". The protagonist is a defence attorney who has to defend the son of a mob boss accused of murder. Despite the air-tight case (the crime occurred in a nightclub with 59 witnesses) and concerns about mob ties, he performs his job diligently, insisting on following the system. By raising the possibility that Comic Book Tropes were involved, he introduces enough doubt in the jury to win the case. He then gets into further trouble when the defendant's father wants to recruit him... and refuses to take "no" for an answer.
Film
Literature
Live Action TV
- Almost all the defence attorneys on the Law And Order shows would fit this trope like a glove. Ironically, an episode of this once had an Amoral Attorney on trial give a very stirring closing argument about why defence lawyers were necessary, even though everyone hates them (he still got found guilty, though. Sucka).
- As well as some of the prosecutors. Jack McCoy, in particular, is known for hiding evidence, bullying witnesses, and generally abusing the hell out of the law to get convictions.
- All within the law unless it is personal
- Not all of it. Withholding evidence is illegal when the evidence is sufficient to prove innocence. This is often referred to as Brady material
 .
- McCoy at least (usually) had the good graces to feel bad about some of his less proud moments.
- AND he also has people telling him YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! when he goes overboard.
- One of the few exceptions is a recurring lawyer on SVU played by Annie Potts, who gets brought in whenever the show decides to have a really sympathetic defendant.
- An even bigger exception would be Danielle Melnick, playes by Tovah Feldshuh, a one-woman crusader for the Bill of Rights whose sole justification for working so hard to defend some of the worst dregs of humanity is that the Constitution says that even the worst deserve a defence in court. A Jewish woman, she even once defended a Neo-Nazi because of her belief in the Constitutional right to a fair trial.
- In an interesting twist occurs in a episode where one of McCoy's subordinates is forced to act as a defence attorney. The moment she is teased for "working for the dark side," McCoy instantly lays down the law saying that she is acting as a proper lawyer and any personnel of his office giving her a hard time for doing her duty would be punished.
- There's also Shambalah Green, a recurring defence attorney from the first few seasons of the original series, who almost always was defending an innocent client or someone who was justified in their actions.
- And Paul Robinette, a former prosecutor for the first 3 seasons of the show. He returns to defend several clients out of sheer principle.
- ''Law And Order UK' decides to put this trope up to 11 with the first episode, with a barrister nicknamed "Limbo" for how low he'll go. So far the other barristers have been of varying moral fibre.
- L&O's definitive example has to be Ben Stone's nemesis, Arthur Gold, who could (and did) often goad Stone into legal mistakes simply by looking like he was enjoying himself while defending obvious scumbags.
- Maurice Levy of The Wire, who not only defends the series' central drug kingpins, but introduces them to investors, advises them on who 'needs to go' and sells confidential court papers under the counter to all comers thanks to a stooge in the courthouse
- Levy is at least realistic in that he doesn't just defend the drug lords because he's evil, but rather because he makes tons of money doing it. When he learns that Marlo is using a cell phone, he says that he'll be making a lot of money from Marlo soon because the cops will have charges against him soon.
- An very evil corporate lawyer in a Vengeance Unlimited episode was resorting to blackmail to defend a polluting corporation and already planned to sue back the Ill Girl 's mother for libel. Naturally, that being Vengeance Unlimited, the Smug Snake gets what he deserves.
- Wolfram and Hart, the Evil Demonic Law Firm from Angel, exemplify this trope. Immoral Attorney, actually. Defending human and nonhuman evil-doers is their purpose in life. And they have ninjas and special ops teams.
- The attorneys we actually meet tend to be more Complete Monster than merely amoral.
- One interesting example would be The Practice, where some of the protagonists often represent murderers and drug dealers using questionable methods.
- This trope is parodied in "That Mitchell and Webb Look" which features a sketch about two lazy script writers who do not research the films and TV shows they write. One of their productions is a parody of "Shark" about a defence attorney becoming a prosecutor, when the character is asked why he used to defend known rapists, he responds with :" I don't know, I guess I just liked rapists."
- Kitaoka Shuuichi (Zolda) from Kamen Rider Ryuki, although he gets enough characterization to qualify as an Anti Villain. He defends the murderer Asakura Takeshi (later Kamen Rider Ouja), but eventually dumps his case. Asakura spends the rest of the series trying to kill Kitaoka.
- Criminal Justice, a five-part 2008 BBC 1 drama, features a barrister who makes up a self-defence defence for the main character (a guy who doesn't remember what happened). The drama got a complaint from the head of the Bar Council, the UK's lawyer group. Peter Moffat responded that said head had recently punched his opponent, which is a rather weak response.
- Self-proclaimed "Super Lawyer" Shuichi Kitaoka from Kamen Rider Ryuki falls under this: he fights only for himself and refuses cases when he either sees them to be impossible to win or just doesn't like the client.
- Alan Shore of Boston Legal is an inversion. When ever he does something considered unethical, he normally has a moral and compassionate reason for it.
- Alan Shore started out in The Practice (and in Boston Legal, although he became less scummy as the series went on) as an exemplary example of an Amoral Attorney. His unethical behavior caused him to be fired from the firm in The Practice, which he successfully sues and, after stealing client files, goes to Boston Legal's firm of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt. One of this troper's favorite moment of his that shows just how amoral he is can be found halfway down here, but ends with him browbeating the nebbish store clerk who saw his client, a very wealthy woman and kleptomaniac, stuff a scarf into her purse:
- "He would fire me, Miles, if I didn't explore every nuance and shadow of your personality. Every secret place and insufficiency in the hours that you will spend in that witness chair, Miles, in front of all those friends you invited. And when I'm finished with you, even they will think you are a vindictive, pathetic little sycophant who has falsely accused and probably framed a fine woman for something she never did and never would do only so that you could get at long last your moment of attention. By the time I'm done, I'll have you believing you put that scarf in her handbag. Lee Tyler can afford to hire any attorney in the world. She's chosen me. Do you wonder if I'm any good, Miles? Do you really wonder?"
- Barrister Michael Kidd from the Australian TV cop series Phoenix and its Law Procedural spin-off Janus. Based on a famous real-life Melbourne lawyer. He's despised for defending Complete Monster Malcolm Hennessy, but is respected for his abilities as well — the main detective protagonist doesn't hesitate to recommend Kidd to a fellow officer who'd been accused of police brutality (Kidd does, in fact, get him off).
- Both the classic courtroom drama Perry Mason and Matlock, its spiritual successor, avert this for the protagonists in a very odd way. While both Perry Mason and Ben Matlock are successful and honourable defence attorneys, they always win by uncovering the real guilty party and dramatically presenting proof of their guilt in court. In other words, in order to redeem his role as a defence attorney, each hero has to also do the prosecutor's job, and offer up someone else to take the innocent defendant's place in jail. Of course, prosecuting attorneys and rival lawyers in both shows are likely to fit this trope perfectly.
- In the 1990s Superman series Lois And Clark, an episode involved Superman being sued for injuring a man whilst saving his life, which eventually snowballed into a class action lawsuit against him. He thus had to find an "honest lawyer" to defend him, and only managed to find one. In the whole of Metropolis. Willing to defend Superman. For all it's shiny loveliness, this suggests that Metropolis is actually one heck of a Crapsack City.
- Recently, Karl Mayer of Desperate Housewives has revealed himself to be one. If the promos are any indication, not only is he not above cheating Bree's soon-to-be-ex spouse out of money he is entitled to, he is also willing to talk Bree into staging a robbery in her own house.
- Battlestar Galactica. Romo Lampkin, Baltar's defence lawyer, manages to gain Lee Adama's respect even though he's an unapologetic Manipulative Bastard.
- Jeff Winger in Community is an unapologetic version of this trope... at least for now. The very fact that he lied about having a college degree is the reason he's at community college in the first place.
- One episode of The Bill had a drug dealer pretend to be a solicitor- so he could sit in on the interviews of his subordinates...
- Subverted in Lie To Me, where James Marsters plays a District Attorney who Cal's ex-wife thinks is a racist who is prosecuting a black student for statutory rape of a white girl... He's not and later drops all charges after it emerges that the student was tricked into sleeping with her by said Fille Fatale. Then he gets shot dead by her father.
Newspaper Comics
- In an early Dilbert comic, Dilbert was concerned that a new invention of his might be dangerous, so he decided to seek legal counseling. After explaining his situation to a lawyer, Dilbert asked if he would help. The lawyer replied "nah, it sounds like I could make more money by suing you."
Theater
Video Games
- Inverted by all the prosecutors (not counting Payne) in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series, at least when they start out. All but one of them, however, fall to some varying level of redemption.
- This troper would argue that Godot is a subversion. If I recall correctly, he played his trials straight.
- In the fourth case of Justice For All this is a major plot point: Phoenix himself eventually figures out that his client is guilty of hiring an assassin, but his partner is being held hostage by that same assassin to get a not guilty verdict since the assassin has a reputation to keep up. Phoenix goes through much handwringing about what the right thing to do is, especially since his opponent Edgeworth is fresh off a Heel Face Turn, and letting the client get off would most likely result in an innocent woman being convicted of the murder. Eventually the player is forced to make a decision between guilty and not guilty when it looks like the attempt to Take A Third Option has been crushed. The choice doesn't actually affect anything, as just before Phoenix speaks up somebody comes to save the day, but after the trial a character tells you to think about the choice you made then as a sign of what being a defence attorney really means to you.
- This doesn't just count for Prosecutors either; the murderer of a defence attorney in the fourth case of Ace Attorney committed the crime because the defence lawyer in question was an Amoral Attorney that convinced him to plead Insanity in court even though he was truly innocent. He lost everything that mattered to him as a result of this.
- Then there's Kristoph Gavin in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, who planned to use forged evidence in order to win a case for a particularly high-profile client. In contrast, this game's prosecutor averts the older series' inversion by being perfectly moral from his first appearance.
- Kristoph Gavin is a particularly egregious example, because after his client chose to go with a different attorney, he decided that the client needed to be found guilty. When that failed, he then took it upon himself to run a Xanatos Gambit to destroy Phoenix Wright, the other attorney. When that succeeded, he was himself the victim of a Xanatos Gambit by Wright, through Apollo Justice. I think there's only one Moral Attorney there...
- Well, there's that, and then the fact that he killed 2 people and tried to kill another just to keep their mouths shut.
- To be fair, Nick's gambit was probably more of an attempt to beat Kristoph at his own game. Given the results, I'd say he succeeded quite nicely.
- Want another example of an amoral defence attorney? In Ace Attorney Investigations, we meet Himiko Kazura, who takes this trope to its logical conclusion, MURDERING HER OWN CLIENT AND A WITNESS.
- Igland of the Swift Sword in Neverwinter Nights is willing to fail logic forever in order to secure a conviction, doesn't care if there are mitigating factors, and begins screaming about bribery should you succeed. Of course, your character is permitted to commit out-and-out bribery and corruption in order to get him off. After you finish the trial, relationships between the victim's culture and the defendant's tribe get worse no matter what happened.
Webcomics
Western Animation
Real Life
- For that matter, Roy Cohn himself is Truth In Television for this trope. One of Joe McCarthy's main allies (which, of course, would be endearing enough by itself), outside of his association with McCarthy he faced numerous proceedings for professional misconduct (including perjury and witness tampering) and was eventually disbarred. He once tried to forge a dying and comatose man's signature on a will that would make him beneficiary by forcing a pen in the man's hand and putting it to the document. As if that wasn't bad enough, although being himself a closeted homosexual one of his favourite tactics during his anti-communism days was to relentlessly pursue and expose people for homosexuality (whether they were or not), which those days meant complete ruin for those so exposed (and in many cases, suicide). A charming man and a credit to his profession.
- After the OJ Simpson trial, many Amoral Attorney characters who appeared were directly based upon his lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, who successfully convinced a jury to acquit him using a defence based on the argument that racist police officers within the LAPD were attempting to frame him for his wife's murder, with his theatrical rhetorical manner and expensive style of dress making him an easy-recognized target. He has been criticized by the Defence Attorney profession for getting away with tricks and showmanship that many believe destroys the spirit of proper representation if not the letter.
- F. Lee Bailey, another member of O.J.'s "Dream Team", once claimed to have knowingly defended a number of guilty men, but said that the guilty never got away unscathed, stating that "my fees are sufficient punishment for anyone." Given how much money Simpson's lawyers were able to soak him for after winning the trial for him, he was probably right.
- Truth In Television: Watch Lawyers-to-be go the rounds in a mock trial competition. During the competition, your team switches sides on a regular basis so you must have a solid defence for both sides of the case.
- Mock trial cases are carefully designed so that neither side is obviously correct and a legitimate defence can be made for both. If the accused is clearly guilty, then the case will stipulate their guilt and the trial will be about determining the nature of the sentence.
- In what could be considered a subversion of this, Jack Thompson accused various lawyers at Blank Rome of being this, claiming that by representing Rockstar North and/or Take Two in court, they were knowingly profiting from the distribution of pornography to children. Some of the rather unkind messages he sent to Blank Rome played a significant part in his disbarment trial.
- Mike Nifong of Duke Lacrosse Rape Case fame. He withheld DNA evidence that could have exonerated the accused, used his position to try an intimidate a immigrant taxi driver who could place one of the accused across town while the alleged rape was going on, making false statements to the press, and just generally ignoring the rules of conduct as he saw fit. He was disbarred and spent a day in prison.
- It's worth noting that Maximilien Robespierre was a lawyer, although he was amoral in a different kind of way.
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