Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers in Live-Action TV series.
- On Baywatch, when Eddie is arrested for statutory rape (wrongly, as the supposed victim lied), one of the cops questioning him, who happens to be a friend of his, gently tells him that he shouldn't have waived his rights to an attorney. Eddie angrily and staunchly tells him that he doesn't need one because he didn't do anything.
- Constantly on Bones. Even if a person isn't the killer, once they call a lawyer you can tell they're going to be bad in one way or another.
- When Booth and Bones are in New Orleans, she becomes a murder suspect. Bones, being logical, tells the police everything she knows to clear her name faster, against Booth's vehement advice. Booth, being a cop, knows her story makes her sound guilty and calls their lawyer friend to represent Bones. Their lawyer friend also tells Bones to shut up.
- Cleverly played with in “The Man in the Mud” where the same Simple Country Lawyer attends three separate interviews on behalf of three different suspects (who are related to each other) and the first interview (and the second) are to set up the lawyer as a Chekhov's Gunman rather than establish the client as a bad guy. The third family member is heavily implied to be guilty, but the lawyer argues that the evidence is too weak for a conviction and keeps his client from saying anything incriminating. Nonetheless, Booth is convinced he has the right suspect and arrests her anyway, despite knowing that she won’t spend long in jail, in an effort to instigate a Convicted by Public Opinion fate.
- In one episode, one suspect is a film student, and wants their lawyer. Our heroes point out how that makes people look guilty in film and TV. At the end of the episode, they know they have the right suspect, because Team Bones lays out the facts of their guilt, and the suspect asks for their lawyer.
- Breaking Bad:
- Played around with in "Face Off", where a few police detectives grab Jesse for a "conversation", which is about the poisoning of his girlfriend Andrea's son Brock, and after he realizes they're fishing for evidence he asks for his attorney. They give him a momentary spiel about how there's no need since he's not actually under arrest, how lawyers will just complicate "straightening the matter out", and how it could be taken the wrong way, but he doesn't fall for it, and just calls Saul.
- In "Hermanos", Gus is called in to discuss possible involvement in Gale's death. This could be the turning point that causes the police to discover Gus's massive drug empire, but since Gus is a Villain with Good Publicity who deliberately built up a good rapport with law enforcement, he doesn't call an attorney to speak with the detectives since he knows that would raise suspicions. He instead defuses the situation himself with a quiet, believable alibi. It's only partially succesful since the DEA as an organization does not pursue an investigation of Fring, but Agent Schrader refuses to let it go. This forces Fring to resort to much more extreme measures to protect his empire by planning an assassination of Schrader, leading him into further conflict with Walt.
- In "Madrigal," Mike invokes this by not bringing an attorney when he's summoned to the DEA office to be interviewed by Hank and Gomez about his potential involvement in Gus's drug operation. Before they start the questioning, Gomez asks Mike to affirm that he is waiving his right to have an attorney present, and has Mike say this directly to the video camera so that it's on the official record. Being a former cop who's conducted many interrogations himself, Mike is able to sit through the interview and doesn't crack at all, even when Hank drops the reveal that they've found out about an offshore bank account in Mike's granddaughter's name in an attempt to get Mike to let his guard down.
- In Season 5B, Skyler proves she is well acquainted with how little this trope has to do with reality when Hank tries to invoke it when asking her to give evidence against Walt. Instead of reacting as he'd hoped, she instead sees through his act of manipulation as an instant red flag that Hank isn't interested in protecting her, only in getting Walt at any cost.
- Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad, uses it just as well:
- It calls BS on this trope in "Uno". When the county treasurer Craig Kettleman is implicated for embezzling $1.6 million, Jimmy McGill explains that what gets innocent people wrongly convicted is they're concerned about looking guilty, but they're mistaken about what makes a person look guilty in the first place. Getting arrested is what makes people start assuming you must be guilty of something, (whether you actually are or not) not your decision to not lawyer up. Furthermore, without an attorney present, it's fairly easy for a detective to twist what you said and get you convicted even if you're innocent. The Kettlemans end up seeking legal representation—just not with Jimmy, because he looks like "the kind of lawyer guilty people hire."
- Makes a more subtle second appearance in "Five-O", the sixth episode of the first season, when Mike is questioned by police. They do their best to convince him he doesn't need legal counsel because he isn't under arrest, and seem disappointed that as a fellow police officer he isn't willing to cooperate with them by answering questions informally. Mike, being Mike, isn't fooled, and only replies with one word no matter what they say: "Lawyer." To take it a step further, he is in fact guilty of the crime they're questioning him for: the revenge-murder of the two corrupt cops who set up his son Matthew to get killed.
- Discussed again in the season 2 episode "Cobbler" when Daniel Wormald, a new-time drug dealer who's been ripped off by Nacho, calls the cops to complain about his baseball card collection being stolen, but the cops quickly suspect that he's a drug dealer and start investigating him under the guise of investigating the burglary. Mike, who had been hired by Daniel as muscle, figures this out and hires Jimmy to be Daniel's attorney. The cops are openly suspicious that a man who called the cops has an attorney present during questioning. Jimmy ultimately has to come up with an outlandish justification
for why the dealer is so protective of his privacy to throw the cops off the trail.
- Very prevalent in Castle. If a suspect is the least bit law-savvy, the characters will state among themselves, "He's lawyering up." and treat it as the worst thing in the world that he is even allowed to do this.
- But also subverted because people who lawyer up turn out to be innocent about half the time.
- It's subverted another way in 'Hedgefund Home Boys' when the character who is guilty explicitly refuses a lawyer because he thinks he's completely untouchable. This backfires spectacularly when Castle tricks him into admitting his guilt.
- One episode played with this, where a well-to-do woman brought in for questioning (and not even as a suspect) comes in with about a dozen lawyers. In this case, though, it wasn't used to make her look guilty, but to make her look like a Rich Bitch who felt she was above such petty concerns as law or justice.
- In one episode, a dominatrix is thought to be a murderer because she asks for a lawyer in the middle of questioning. When she turns out to be innocent, it's decided that she insisted on a lawyer simply to be unhelpful in a show of dominance...and because she was a former lawyer herself.
- At another point in the same episode, she pointed out that due to NDAs with her clients, she couldn't share their names without a warrant. She wasn't trying to be unhelpful (and said as much), she just knew that if she didn't she could easily be sued by her clients (who, in turn, could be ruined by revelations of visiting her). Very much Surprisingly Realistic Outcome.
- Castle himself lawyered up when he was framed for a murder. Not immediately, because he really could be sure that the police wanted to help him, but when the evidence really started to mount, he didn't hesitate.
- Happens occasionally on The Closer. Brenda's expert interrogation techniques include getting the suspect to waive their rights to counsel, and sometimes she invokes this trope to get them to do so, basically telling them that there's no need for them to call a lawyer, that all it will do is make them look more guilty and as long as they don't have anything to hide it's easier for everybody if they just talk to her without a lawyer present. Usually it works, even though she's pretty much bullshitting them.
- Cold Case:
- A man being relentlessly interrogated by Stillman asks for a lawyer, who coldly dismisses the request—"Why? Did you do something wrong?" When the man says "No, but—", Stillman cuts him off and continues badgering him. Another episode has them dragging in a suspect, who immediately asks for a lawyer. When the detectives attempt to begin interrogating him, the man staunchly repeats his request and turns away, making it clear that he will not say a word until his attorney arrives.
- Another suspect didn't hire a lawyer, but he refused to speak with the police or otherwise cooperate with them, also refusing to take a DNA test. Both of which are well within his rights (unless they have probable cause to compel the test), but Vera took this as definitive proof of his guilt and as such, relentlessly hounded the man until the DA needed to warn him to back off.
- In yet another episode, the ex-lover of a murder suspect believes him to be guilty because of how fast he hired a lawyer, clearly believing in this trope. And given that he turned out to be guilty, it's played straight. Ironically, it's the detective questioning her who tells her that that's actually the smart thing to do.
- Sort-of-inverted in the second Elementary episode. After being informed that the suspect won't talk and he has a lawyer, Holmes says that's astute of him, because he's innocent. Apart from this, no one on the show lawyers up, guilty or no. Richer suspects do sometimes arrive with legal representation already in tow, but they tend to get in one or two lines at most before Sherlock explains why their presence is irrelevant.
- Cold Squad:
- Exploited in "Personal Politics": the suspect asks to speak with his lawyer, but the detectives say that there's no need to get a lawyer involved, they just need him to explain his alibi. Wanting to appear helpful, he does so — and then the detectives immediately tear the alibi apart, having previously questioned the other people involved, and merely needing him to either confess or get caught in an obvious lie.
- In "All in the Family," the fact that a suspect not only got a lawyer but got an expensive lawyer, provides a clue that he's guilty of more than the police knew about.
- Inverted on Corner Gas, where Davis thinks someone he's arrested is suspicious because he doesn't ask for a lawyer. It turns out that the reason he didn't ask is that he is one.
- Criminal Minds:
- This is done quite often on the show, with the agents using the ploy of "if you help me solve the case (by confessing), I'll get you a deal with the DA". "Lawyering up" is seen as the worst thing that can happen to the case, since when it does, the interrogation stops and the suspect can walk free. The most notable example of a suspect walking after "lawyering up" is "Aftermath", when Elle Greenaway botches an undercover operation by going after the UnSub too early in the operation, allowing him to lawyer up and walk out a free man. Greenaway would later find him and shoot him dead, leading to her eventual release from the team.
- Subverted in season 11 episode "Internal Affairs", it's not the suspect threatening to get her lawyer husband that makes her guilty. It's that she never carries out with the threat that makes the BAU realize that if he found out that she was arrested, he would know she is guilty.
- Averted when Hotch is arrested by Internal Affairs and threatens to ask for a lawyer unless the case against him is explained. The interviewer tries to invoke this by saying that only guilty people call their lawyers, to which Hotch replies "No, smart people do".
- In the season 5 finale of Dexter, the other characters (all police officers) treat Detective Quinn this way when he requests to speak with an attorney when it's likely that he might be implicated in a crime that he didn't actually commit.
- This is commonly averted on Harry's Law; the suspects in violent crimes who hire Harry are almost always innocent or in a moral grey area.
- Generally averted on Hill Street Blues, as one of the main characters is a Public Defender. In fact, Captain Furillo sometimes uses the fact a particular suspect has asked for a lawyer to his advantage; since they're refusing to speak to the police until they have counsel, they've no excuse not to keep their mouths shut and listen while he delivers a few hard truths about how much trouble they're in.
- Subverted in Homicide: Life on the Street. The "Documentary" Episode discussed this at length by implying that it is only natural for a man, even an innocent one, who has been arrested, accused of a violent crime, dealing with hostile or indifferent officers, and generally terrified, to ask for an attorney. They also show that the reason many criminals don't ask for Legal Aid is that they fear being charged without saying their piece or offering an explanation.
- They further clarify that the only smart move is to shut up and ask for a lawyer. "Look, Bunkie. Talking to a police detective is only going to hurt you". The full clip can be found here.
- They further clarify that the only smart move is to shut up and ask for a lawyer. "Look, Bunkie. Talking to a police detective is only going to hurt you". The full clip can be found here
- Hotel Beau Séjour: Out of all the police interrogations depicted in the show, the only character to request a lawyer was Varderkerk, a notorious drug dealer. (He was innocent of the murder in question but wanted to conceal his drug business.)
- Las Vegas:
- Played straight in an episode when Danny McCoy, a casino security expert, is falsely being accused of sexual harassment.
- Played with when Danny catches MIT computer experts hacking into the Montecito, when they ask for a lawyer (knowing he's not a cop, strangely) he resorts to claiming the case is now out of their hands and Homeland Security take over, leading to them admitting they wanted to get into the signage to slag off Cal Tech.
- Law & Order: There's about a 50/50 chance that someone who declines a lawyer and says "I've got nothing to hide" is implied to be bluffing. Averted and played straight at the same time in one episode. The police have a list of suspects that they want to get blood samples from. Everyone agrees except one guy, who is promptly arrested as no one else matched and immediately asks for his lawyer and it goes to trial. Later, it turns out he was completely innocent and just thought the taking of his blood was an unnecessary intrusion on his privacy. When he asks McCoy for an apology, McCoy refuses, and chastises him for wasting their time! Probably Hollywood Law, as they require probable cause to compel a blood sample or bring someone to trial. He's totally right — if they don't have it, they are intruding.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
- Subverted in an episode when a murderer makes a full confession without his lawyer present, only to later have the whole thing thrown out because he offhandedly mentioned said lawyer, which he claims constituted a request. The judge actually buys it.
- But yet another episode (and probably countless more) has Stabler browbeating a man into continuing the interrogation despite the fact that he's asked for a lawyer and also asked to leave (which he's allowed to do if he's not under arrest). When the confession is promptly thrown out because of this, Stabler takes no responsibility, instead blaming Alex for the screw-up.
- In fact, Stabler is practically the poster child for why you should lawyer up and not say anything other than "I want a lawyer" until you get one. In real life, any halfway-competent defense attorney could have most cases Stabler is involved in thrown out of court because of precisely this tendency of his. But police actually following real-life procedures doesn't make for dramatic TV.
- Deconstructed in a later episode when Rollins was framed for a murder. Despite her captain's advice she refused to lawyer up, claiming she did nothing wrong and tried to be as helpful as possible, being completely honest and even bringing new evidence to the Internal Affairs. She ended up inadvertently implicating herself and got arrested for her trouble. Being a detective herself, she should've known better. On the other hand, she didn't expect for her own sister to set her up. Thankfully, her coworkers managed to trick the guilty party into confessing of the frame up.
- Luke Cage (2016): The first season frequently features police officers ignoring or resisting suspects' right to an attorney.
- Candace gives a false witness account to Misty on behalf of Mariah. Mariah does send Benjamin Donovan to Candace to make sure her story stays straight, but Misty tries to pressure her into ignoring the lawyer's advice and coming clean.
- Luke consistently rejects the idea of having a lawyer until the last moments of the series. He claims that since he's innocent, he doesn't need a lawyer, even though Claire keeps insisting that she knows a good one. He finally relents when he is arrested for illegally escaping from Seagate (where he was imprisoned for a crime he was framed for), a crime he did commit.
- Shades, a career criminal, spends his entire time while under arrest requesting a lawyer. Inspector Ridley continues to question him without a lawyer present, even though his testimony would be invalid at this point. Despite her best efforts to intimidate him with the long jail time he's looking at, he refuses to crack and even trolls her a little.
- After Diamondback kills a police officer to implicate Luke as a Cop Killer, some cops pick up Lonnie, a kid that knows Luke. The boy immediately demands that his mother, who is in law school, be present. Unfortunately, tensions are high, Luke is believed to have killed one cop and assaulted two others (and the dead cop happens to be the interrogator's former training officer), and Lonnie has a bit of an attitude, causing the interrogator to eventually lose his temper and take it out on Lonnie.
- In Madam Secretary, Elizabeth McCord is facing possible charges of violating the Espionage Act. At the suggestion of getting a lawyer, she answers, "I don't want a lawyer. It'll make it look like I need a lawyer." Still wrong, but a justified attitude in this case due to the realities of politics: as she's the Secretary of State and a longtime friend and coworker of President Dalton, her looking guilty would reflect badly on him as well.
- Subverted in Motive, the homicide detective protagonists respect defence attorneys as an important part of the justice system (it's a Canadian show), and often encourage people they suspect may be innocent or have extenuating circumstances to get lawyers. In one episode, they are visibly disgusted by a public defender who encourages his client to plead guilty despite minimal evidence, and his explanation that he believes his client is guilty and he's just trying to "help [them] out", even giving the suspect contact information for a non-profit that can provide better representation.
- Zigzagged in NCIS, lawyering up happens all the time, and if it does the one doing it is just as likely to be completely innocent as they are guilty of something.
- NYPD Blue:
- The detectives (or at least one of them) would regularly play good cop on a perp, saying he should confess and he'll get a lighter sentence, etc. They'd do practically anything to keep someone from calling his lawyer.Perp: I know my rights. I want a lawyer.
Detective: Oh, now, you don't want to do that. If you call a lawyer I can't help you. - When the detectives want to interview somebody who is not a direct suspect (at least not yet), and this person refuses to talk to them without a lawyer present, it is viewed as a huge irritation. Persons doing this are usually portrayed in quite an unsympathetic light (which is only partly justified by the story being told from the detectives' point of view).
- The detectives (or at least one of them) would regularly play good cop on a perp, saying he should confess and he'll get a lighter sentence, etc. They'd do practically anything to keep someone from calling his lawyer.
- One Life to Live. When gang-rape leader Todd Manning attacks his victim Marty again, her friend Luna happens upon the scene and hits him over the head with a pipe. Unfortunately, when giving their statement to the cops, everything they say is misinterpreted and the cops are left with the impression that Luna was acting like a vigilante rather than defending her friend. Her fiancé is horrified to realize that she talked to the police without a lawyer, but she insists, "I didn't have anything to hide!"
- The People v. O. J. Simpson: When OJ returns home to the scene of the crime, Robert Kardashian tells him he shouldn't talk to the police without a lawyer, but OJ goes along for an interview on the basis that it will make him look guilty if he brings a lawyer.
- Person of Interest. A variation in "Reasonable Doubt" when a former prosecutor doesn't call for a lawyer after being framed for murder, but that's only so she can find out what the evidence is against her when the police lay it out during her interrogation. She then calls for a female lawyer of similar build, knocks her out and leaves the police station wearing her clothes.
- Averted in the 1990's Australian TV cop series Phoenix and its Law Procedural spin-off, Janus. Although the police detectives despise barrister Michael Kidd for successfully defending the cop-killing Hennessy family, the main detective protagonist doesn't hesitate to recommend Kidd to a fellow officer who'd been falsely accused of police brutality.
- The Professionals. In "The Rack", a court of enquiry is being held into the death of a suspect in CI5 custody. When George Cowley is asked who he wants as counsel to represent CI5's side, he replies thus:Cowley: Counsel? My God, I founded this organisation; I will answer for it!
- The Punisher (2017): Billy Russo is asked by Dinah to come down for questioning, as she's figured out that he killed Sam Stein. Though this trope is more a sign of Billy's confidence that Dinah doesn't have any evidence on him.Dinah Madani: I thought you'd be accompanied by counsel.
Billy Russo: Why? Lawyers are for the guilty. - Generally averted on The Rockford Files. Jim Rockford, the clear hero, would always immediately request to speak to an attorney after being arrested. Conversely, total sleazeball Angel Martin always tried to talk immediately.
- One Shark episode featured a serial killer named Wayne Callison dismissing his lawyer and making his own defense against five murder charges and an attempted murder. Prosecutor Sebastian Stark feared having no lawyer would help Callison look innocent.
- Star Trek: Enterprise: Subverted in "Terra Prime". When Gannet is accused of being The Mole for Terra Prime and her alibi falls apart, she clams up and demands a lawyer, to which the Enterprise crew throw up their hands in dismay — they obviously think she's stalling for time. It turns out that she is a mole, but she's actually working for Starfleet Intelligence, not Terra Prime.
- Star Trek: Voyager. Averted in "Non Sequitur". When Harry Kim realises he's suspected of treason, he refuses to continue without legal counsel. This is likely a Continuity Nod to TNG's "The Drumhead", which had An Aesop about the subject of legal rights.
- In an episode of Tales from the Crypt, a horror writer is arrested near the scene of a grisly murder. He considers calling a lawyer but decides against it because he believes it'll make him look guilty. Deconstructed when it turns out he is innocent and the detective is the killer, but without a lawyer to protect him, he's browbeaten into giving a confession and ends up on death row.
- Frequently done on Walker, Texas Ranger. Even with hard-core criminals who usually know to keep their mouths shut and ask for an attorney. Asking for one immediately makes someone look like an unrepentant sleazeball hiding behind an equally sleazy attorney. To make matters worse, it's usually Alex, a prosecutor who is not allowed to lie to a suspect, who is seen doing something very similar to the NYPD example posted above—telling them that if they ask for a lawyer, all chances of a deal are gone. On the show, this always makes the criminal quickly agree to cooperate. In Real Life, this is flat-out unethical conduct that would result in her being reprimanded.
- Another especially bad example involves a bratty kid demanding a lawyer before he talks to the cops. His father refuses and basically threatens to beat the crap out of him if he doesn't tell the cops what he knows. The Rangers stand there looking downright smug and amused at the whole thing. Never mind that they just violated the rights of someone who, as rude as he is, explicitly asked for an attorney. In Real Life, after that, anything he said would almost certainly be inadmissible in court.
- In another episode, two rangers, Sydney and Gage arrive at someone's home to ask if his brother (their murder suspect) is there. The man says no and tries to close the door on them, only for Gage to push it open and force his way into the apartment—without a warrant, and against the man's clearly expressed refusal to let them in.
- This trope is applied so frequently that when Alex herself is a murder suspect, she talks to the cops and assistant DA without an attorney. As a lawyer herself, she should know how stupid this is—her own father, also an attorney, practically gives her a Dope Slap about this.
- Without a Trace had an innocent man confess to a crime after hours of Perp Sweating; Viv suggested he might be innocent because he didn't ask for his lawyer during that whole time.
- Yellowjackets: Whenever the police question Shauna or Jeff about Adam's murder, they imply to the couple that they shouldn't need to consult a lawyer if they have nothing to hide. In spite of increasing signs that they're primary suspects, and Misty trying to prep Shauna (she even had a cookie with "I want my lawyer" written on it), no one in the family asks for a lawyer until after repeated and exhaustive interrogations.
