Real Lawyer Reacts to Liar Liar (Part 1) - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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- How would you like to make a partner right now?
- Oh, oh no, oh no.
Ew, quid pro quo sexual harassment!
Oh, is that even consensual?
(cheerful jingle)
Hey legal eagles, the James Stone here,
teaching you how to think like a lawyer.
Today we are covering one of the funniest
legal movies of all time, Liar Liar.
Now this is the first in a two-part series.
As always, remember to like and subscribe,
and be sure to comment in the form of an objection.
I'll either sustain or overrule your objections,
and while you're there, let me know what movie
or TV show I should do next,
and stick around until the end of the video
where I give the first half of Liar Liar
a grade for legal realism.
So without further ado, let's dig in
to the first half of Liar Liar.
- My dad,
he's
a liar.
- A liar?
Oh, I, I'm sure you don't mean a liar.
- Well, he wears a suit and goes to court
and talks to the judge.
- Oh, oh, I see,
you mean he's a lawyer.
(relaxed music)
- I object, that is slanderous and I will take that
little boy to court and sue him for all that he is worth.
Uh, you know, or no, it's not defamation,
I'm just kidding.
- Reede, do you have a moment?
- I'm sorry, I'm very late,
it's my day to be with my son.
- A couple of reporters want to talk to you
about your big win today.
- Oh yeah, how's my hair?
- Fabulous, you look great.
- So lawyers often have to talk to the press.
I've talked to journalists on many occasions
to talk about recent developments in the law
and things that are going on in my cases,
because if you don't do PR for your client, no one will,
or worse yet, they'll talk to your opponent
who will give a completely different spin,
and you've gotta get ahead of that
to make sure that your side gets out.
- Fred, it's your duty to present
the strongest case possible.
- Sort of. - The strongest case possible
consistent with the truth. - Yeah, sort of.
- Will you let the judge decide what's true?
That's what he gets paid for.
- Eh. - You get paid to win.
- So lawyers are bound by the rules
of professional responsibility and ethics
for their particular jurisdiction,
and most jurisdictions base their rules
on the ABA model rules of conduct,
and under those rules, a lawyer has an obligation
of candor to judges and juries.
In other words, they have to be honest
to those judges that they're up in front of,
so under the rules of professional responsibility,
no single lawyer can lie to a tribunal,
and in fact, if the lawyer knows that their client
is going to lie to a judge or jury, that lawyer
has an obligation to not elicit that information.
In fact, the lawyer has a duty to try to convince
their client not to offer false testimony
in front of a tribunal,
so there are plenty of rules of professional responsibility
that prevent lawyers from actively lying to a court.
So under rule 3.3 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct
a lawyer can not lie to a judge,
a lawyer cannot knowingly elicit false testimony
from their client, and in fact, if you know that
there is contrary legal authority out there,
you have to give that to the judge in addition
to the legal authority that actually helps your case.
So this attorney is absolutely right
that there is a limit to the kind of representation
that you can use for a particular client,
and you can't actively lie to a judge or jury to help
your client out, regardless of what your client wants.
- Damn it, I completely forgot.
- Oh, what a surprise.
- You are a saint.
I should buy you a gift.
- You did.
- I always do the classy thing.
- I think it's inappropriate for a lawyer
to rely on his legal secretary or legal assistant
to get gifts for his family.
However, I will put in a plug for having
a good legal secretary, they can really save your life
when you are working really long hours
or you have a filing that is on a tight deadline.
They can really be the difference between life or death
in an attorney's office because they know your schedule,
they know what's going on, they know what needs to be done,
and often they're knowledgeable enough
to really help you out when you're in a tight bind.
- Any calls?
- Ted Rawling's clerk, he needs your filing.
- Tell him it's in the mail.
- Right, you'll do it next week.
Mr. McKinley called. - Oh man.
- To confirm your meeting tomorrow.
- All right, so one of the things that drives
all attorneys just completely insane is
the deadlines that they have to adhere to.
When a court or a judge sets a deadline,
the worst thing you can possibly do
is let that deadline lapse because the courts
have a very busy schedule and you're at their mercy.
So if you miss a court-set deadline,
you can be in a huge amount of trouble.
You could miss one deadline and that could be grounds
for getting disbarred or getting sanctioned by the court,
and really prejudicing your client.
Often, these deadlines are what's called jurisdictional,
which means that if you miss that deadline,
your case might get dismissed.
So deadlines are this malpractice trap for attorneys,
and I've seen many, many appeals taken
where the attorney just screwed up,
they missed a deadline, they were late in a filing,
and you cannot do what Fletcher Reede is trying to do here
and just push off a deadline when the court
is calling you up and saying "you need to file something."
That could be really important to the case,
and you could get horribly sanctioned
if you fail to adhere to that deadline,
so that's the first time Fletcher may have been
disbarred in this particular movie.
- I heard about your victory, congratulations.
You know, you're making quite an impression
on the partnership committee.
- Oh that's right, you folks are meeting again soon.
I've just been keeping myself so busy
I haven't even thought about it. (laughs)
- Most law firms have a partnership committee
that is formed by a group of equity partners,
which means that they are actual partners,
they own equity in the particular law firm
and they're going to choose who gets to come in
as another equity partner for that law firm.
One of the things that most people don't know
about partners in a big law firm
is that in order to become a partner,
you have to actually invest, usually,
you have to invest in the firm itself.
So often when you're being upgraded from
an associate to a partner in the law firm,
you actually have to make a substantial contribution,
often on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars,
to purchase your equity.
So they are voting to let you in to allow you to pay
the firm to allow you to be a partner in that law firm.
Hopefully if you're paying a substantial amount
to become an equity partner in a law firm,
it's profitable enough that you will
recoup your investment and then some.
Another thing that a lot of people don't know
about partners in a law firm is that they often
don't get paid a salary.
They only get paid a percentage of revenue
or profit in the law firm itself.
So often when you go from an associate in a law firm
to a partner, you forego a salary
and you only get paid maybe once a year
based on the general financials of that entire firm,
so there's a lot of good and a lot of bad
associate with being a partner,
but obviously Fletcher here wants to become a partner,
as most people do in a law firm.
(playful music)
- Oh, this is good.
This is really smart.
- Thank you.
- Only, well it's not true,
I mean, does that present a problem?
- So if the lawyer himself can't lie
to a judge or jury, I really doubt you can
convince your client to lie on his or her behalf
to the judge or jury, so I think this is a violation
already of rule 3.3, the duty of candor.
- You're the victim here,
the wife of a cold, distant workaholic,
starved for affection, driven in the arms of another man.
- Seven.
- Yeah whatever.
You're not trying to deny him what is rightfully his,
all you're insisting on is what is rightfully yours.
- Yeah.
- And maybe a (scoffs) fraction more.
I think you're bending over backwards.
- So ironically, despite them saying that whatever
was in that legal brief that was a lie,
the argument that Fletcher Reede is making here
aren't really lies, they're just creative ways
of talking about the facts as they exist.
So his rhetorical flourishes here talking about
how she's the victim, those can be true
from her point of view, so it's not necessarily a lie
in and of itself, it's just a creative argument
that uses the facts as they exist.
I don't know if that would win the day
against a prenuptial argument that's pretty cut and dry,
but so far, what he's talking about
probably doesn't breach rule 3.3 yet, we'll see.
- You're right, Mr. Reede,
I am tired of getting kicked around.
- Good for you.
- Thank you, I am so grateful
to have an attorney I can trust.
(whimpers) - Oh god.
All right, so let's talk about whether it's appropriate
for a lawyer to engage in sexual activity
with his or her client.
Up until last year, California was one of the few states
that said that a lawyer could, in fact,
engage in sexual relations with his or her client,
so long as that attorney didn't coerce or force
that client into that activity under duress.
That rule changed last year when California Supreme Court
brought California into line with most other states
that says an attorney cannot, under any circumstances,
have sexual relations with their client,
unless that relationship existed before
the attorney client relationship existed.
So, at the time that this movie was made,
it was sort of okay for clients and attorneys
to have a romantic relationship.
Now, that's not appropriate at all,
so that's something that Fletcher really needs
to watch out for, he needs to be careful with that client.
(heels click)
- Oh you are good.
(chuckles) You are very, very good.
You know, the Cole case is worth a truckload
of money to this firm.
If you win, I guarantee you'll make partner.
- Oh.
- In fact,
how would you like to make a partner right now?
- Oh, oh no.
Oh no. - I mean, I shouldn't--
- Ew, quid pro quo sexual harassment.
Oh, is that even consensual?
Really, I think that that could be considered
quid pro quo sexual harassment.
She is making it seem like his partnership
is contingent on some sort of sexual relationship with her.
So this is yet another example of quid pro quo
sexual harassment showing up in Hollywood.
Mixing romance and an employment
relationship is always tricky.
A jury could look at the situation and say that
his promotion is premised on this romantic relationship
with her and thus it's a quid pro quo.
Always, always tricky, never a good idea.
- You know, the Cole case is worth a truckload of money
to this firm, if you win, I guarantee you'll make partner.
- Oh.
- I don't think she can make that guarantee.
A partnership committee is just that,
it's a committee of other partners,
and if Fletcher doesn't have the right numbers
or the right personality or there are other problems,
then there are all kinds of reasons why
he would not be able to make partner,
even if one particular partner really goes to bat for him.
In fact, while it is really helpful to have
at least one partner go to bat, you need to really
wine and dine the whole partnership committee
in order to make partner.
(playful music) (door bangs)
All right, so fun fact about going to
counsel table in a courtroom like that,
normally you wouldn't be able to walk right up
to counsel table because there are a lot of different
cases that are gonna be called before the judge that day,
and you may not be the first one,
but if you ever go to a courthouse,
if you look outside the door to the courtroom,
then you'll see what's called the docket.
The docket will explain what cases
are up for a hearing that day
and there will probably be a dozen of them at least,
and you'll find which number you are on the docket,
and odds are they'll go sequentially down
and leave the most contentious for the last one
so that they get the most time.
So if Fletcher has the first number on the docket that day,
often you will go and you'll just sit down
straight at a counsel table, but before you do that,
you have to check in with the court clerk,
and in California generally you give them
two copies of a business card so that they can attach that
to the sheet that talks about what your case is there for.
Once you check in with the court clerk
then you can sit down if you are the first number
to be called on the docket.
- Fletcher. (chairs squeak)
- Dana.
- All right Samantha,
how much will it take to put an end to all this?
- 50% of your estate.
- (scoffs) 50%?
With a prenup and proof of adultery?
What's your case?
- Our case is simply this.
(tense music) (stuttering)
- It is pretty normal for attorneys in the same field
to have a prior relationship, to know people
by their first name and to talk with them.
What's odd here though is that Fletcher started out
this movie representing a criminal defendant,
or presumably someone who was a criminal defendant,
and has now jumped into divorce law,
which you don't really see very often.
So it would also be weird for him to have
this prior relationship with another divorce attorney
when it's not clear that he's ever represented
someone in a marital dispute like this.
- All rise for the honorable Judge Marshall Stevens.
- Honorable. (scoffs)
- Good morning, call case number BD09395,
Samantha Cole versus Richard Cole.
How we doing this morning, counsel?
- Fine, thank you.
- And you, Mr. Reede?
- I'm a little upset about a bad sexual episode
I had last night. (laughing)
- So far, this is exactly what happens
when the judge comes into the courtroom
and calls the hearing to order.
They'll read the case name and the case number
so that the stenographer can take that down
and make it part of the official record
so that they have a record of what's going on,
and he'll make a little bit of small talk
with opposing attorneys before getting the ball started
and proceeding into the hearing.
- First, Mr. Reede, I see where your client--
- Your Honor, I would like a continuance.
- This case has already been delayed
several times, Mr. Reede.
- I realize that, Your Honor,
but I would really, really, really like a continuance.
- I'll have to hear good cause, counsel.
- I can't lie.
- Commendable, Mr. Reede, but I'm still waiting
to hear good cause, now do you have one or not?
- Not.
- Motion for continuance denied.
(gavel bangs)
Is there any chance of a settlement in this case?
- Yeah, so that is right on.
Attorneys can ask for continuances all the time,
and often, especially in California state court,
things are going to be delayed over and over and over again.
So if you get to the point where the case is ready
to go to trial, then the judge is going to
want it to go forward with due speed.
So you can get a continuance, but as the judge has
required here, you're gonna have to show good cause.
Now I think Fletcher should have been able to
come up with good cause without having to lie.
He could have said that he was just brought on
to this case a few days ago,
that is generally considered good cause,
especially if the court approved the transfer of counsel
because her old lawyer withdrew from the case
so that Fletcher could come on and represent her.
So if the court presumably approved that withdrawal
and substitution, then he has good cause baked in
to be able to delay this case a little bit more.
- Mr. Reede has made it abundantly clear
that he has no desire-- - Settle!
Settle, settle, settle, settle!
- I don't want to settle.
- Just settle.
- Mr. Reede, you convinced me yesterday,
I'm the victim here, I'm starved for affection,
I'm driven into the arms of another man.
- Seven.
- Yeah whatever.
With the story you came up with, I don't think we can lose.
I want to proceed.
- Mrs. Cole, you don't understand.
- Mr. Reede, do we have a settlement?
- No!
- All right, that's good.
An attorney has an obligation to provide
all offers of settlement to his or her client,
and in the first instance, Fletcher Reede tried to
settle the case without talking to his client,
which would be a violation of the model rules
of professional conduct, which would be cause
for disbarment if he want forward with that,
so watch out for being disbarred,
but ultimately he conferred with his client,
provided the terms of the settlement, and she rejected it.
She has the ability, as the client she's the one
that's in charge of the litigation
and she can choose to reject that settlement
and more forward, that's up to her.
- You know what I pulled you over?
- Depends on how long you were following me. (cringes)
- Why don't we just take it from the top.
- Don't talk to the cops.
- Here goes, I sped, I followed too closely--
- Stop, stop talking to the cop.
- I sped some more, I failed to yield at a crosswalk,
I changed lanes in the intersection,
I changed lanes without signaling
while running a red light and speeding.
- Is that all?
- No.
I have unpaid parking tickets.
(groans) (tender music)
Be gentle.
- All right, let's talk about what Fletcher Reede
should have done in this situation,
with the understanding that he can't lie.
Just because you can't lie
doesn't mean you have to tell the police everything,
so what I would have recommended, and what Fletcher
should have known if he was a better lawyer
is that you don't have to talk to the police.
You almost always have the right to remain silent.
That's in fact what the Miranda warning is all about,
you have the right to remain silent.
Now the police can ask for your identification.
They can ask for your driver's license and your registration
without any real objection, but that doesn't mean
that you have to talk to the police,
nor do you have to answer their questions.
So generally speaking, and there are of course
exceptions to this, but Fletcher didn't need
to tell the police everything that he had done.
He could have just sat there silently
and let the police draw their own conclusions.
Now many police officers will tell you
that if you remain silent during a stop,
that may give them probable cause or reasonable suspicion
that something else is wrong and that they can do
a more thorough search, but here,
Fletcher doesn't appear to have any evidence
of other wrongdoing except for those old parking tickets.
It's not like he had a bunch of cocaine in the trunk
of his car and he didn't want the police to search his car.
So potentially, the police could have responded
to his silence with the assumption of
reasonable suspicion of some other crime,
but they wouldn't have found anything else
and they would have only be able to write him
one or maybe two ticket infractions.
So if Fletcher had been a better attorney,
he just would have stayed silent,
given the police his ID and registration,
and taken whatever ticket the police gave him
instead of making his situation so, so much worse.
- You scratched my car!
- Where?
- Right there.
- Oh, there.
That was already there.
- Why you,
you liar!
You know what I'm gonna do about this?
- What?
- Nothing, because if I take you to small claims court,
it'll just drain eight hours out of my life
and you probably won't show up,
and if I finally got the judgment,
you'd just stiff me anyway, so what I'm gonna do
is piss and moan like an impotent jerk
and then bend over and take it up the tailpipe.
- You been here before haven't you?
- So Fletcher points out that while would be correct
in suing this tow yard for the damage that they have done
to his car, it would be very time intensive
and even if he won, he might never see the money
to compensate him for that damage.
That's called being judgment proof,
where even if someone gets a valid judgment against you,
you have so few funds that you couldn't even pay
that judgment even if you got a court order.
So that happens all that time, where sometimes the people
that commit civil wrongs or do illegal acts
are the ones that are least able to pay for the damages
that they cause, so Fletcher finds himself
on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to law suits,
where he has a valid law suit presumably,
but he'll never see money as a result of it,
which is, it's an issue.
- Hello Judge Stevens, hi, Fletcher Reede,
I'm scheduled to be in your court in half an hour.
- Oh, talking to the judge.
- I badly, badly need a continuance.
Ill, am I ill?
That is the perfect question for you to ask.
Greta please lie to him for me.
- Okay, I have never heard of any instance
where a particular lawyer was able to call up
the judge's chambers and get the judge,
the actual judge on the phone.
That basically should never happen.
There are times when you can call up chambers
and eventually get the judge on the phone,
but in almost all of those situations,
you need opposing counsel present as well.
For example, if you had a deposition where
you thought the witness was behaving improperly
such that you had to shut the deposition down
and the witness would have to be recalled,
well you could threaten and follow through with your threat
to call the judge and report that behavior.
You'd put the judge on speaker phone
and talk about the situation that you're in
so that you can hash it out right there and then,
so you don't have to call the witness back
to do another deposition and incur additional costs,
but that's a situation where even with the judge present,
you're going to have the other side there
so that you have a communication between
all of the parties, not just one party and the judge.
These are called ex parte communications,
the communications that take place outside of court,
and I've never, ever heard of a time when
an attorney could just pick up the phone and call the judge.
That kind of ex parte communication would be
very, very frowned upon and would be
potentially grounds for sanctions because
the other side doesn't know what's going on.
So that really should never happen.
- Mr. Reede, several years ago a friend of mine
had a burglar on her roof, a burglar.
- Oh no.
- He fell through the kitchen sky light,
landed on a cutting board on a butcher's knife,
cutting his leg.
The burglar sued my friend, he sued my friend
and because of guys like you, he won.
My friend had to pay the burglar $6,000, is that justice?
- No.
I'd have got him 10. (laughs)
- All right, here's the thing about that example
about the burglar falling through the roof.
That is a complete urban myth.
I hate hearing that example, it never, ever existed.
That fictitious example was created specifically
by politicians in order to argue for
something called tort reform.
In other words, making it harder for plaintiffs
to be able to sue individuals and entities
for harms that they have befallen them.
Now you can agree with tort reform or you can disagree
with tort reform, but the particular example
of a burglar falling through a sky light
into a kitchen and then suing the homeowner
simply never happened, it is just a piece of fiction
that was created for argument rather than legal precedent.
So if you hear someone use that example,
ask to see where that case came from
because I guarantee that is an urban myth
and not a piece of judicial precedent.
And on top of that, if that example ever did happen
in the real world, there are all kinds of reasons
why the homeowner would succeed.
I don't wanna get into the details of the difference
between an invitee and a trespasser,
and the duty that one property owner owes to another,
but suffice to say there are a lot of reasons why
a homeowner would be successful in defending a suit
against a burglar who had fallen through a sky light.
So just know that that particular example
is completely fictitious and make up for the point of
political argument and has no real basis in the law itself.
All right, that was the first half of Liar Liar.
Next week we'll get to the trial,
including the question of whether the prenup
and the marriage itself was void due to fraud,
but now it's time to give the first half
a grade for legal realism.
(gavel bangs)
There is a lot going for Liar Liar.
You've got the real books that people use in practice.
It was filmed apparently at a real law office,
because it was right across the street
from my old law office,
and you've got some of the dialogue that's pretty realistic.
On the other hand, you've got completely insane
things happening due to a curse that required him
to say only the truth, you've got a lawyer who
doesn't know when to shut up.
All in all, I'm gonna give Liar Liar a B+.
Not a bad effort but there's definitely
room for improvement, and we'll see how you do
next time in the second half.
All right, do you agree with that B+?
Leave your objections in the comments
and let me know what you think I should review next.
In the meantime, check out this playlist
I put together that includes all of my prior reactions,
including Suits, Better Call Saul, and tons more.
So click on this playlist and I'll see you in court.