This is a transcript of the film, included for screen readers and the visually impaired.
Wow, is that what I think it is?
Yes it is.
Nice rock. -Thank you.
How do you afford that on a public defender's salary?
It was my grandmother's. What do you want?
I need you to cover a case for me.
What's the case?
Armed robbery. Couple of kids jacked up old Crystal Heath stole a couple of flat screen televisions.
Oh come on, why would I want that?
Come on Ryder, I have a conflict.
What's the conflict?
You slept with the opposing council again, didn't you?
Ryder, I need you to do this for me
Alright, but I get the next murder case. Double homicide.
Do we have a deal? -We have a deal.
You know uh, Annes a definite catch.
And that ring will seal the deal.
Alright, just leave the case files on my desk.
Come on lets grab a couple of beers.
I gotta take a rain check. Meeting Anne for dinner.
Oh so you're popping the question tonight?
Yup!
[phone ringing]
Hey sweetheart.
Where are you?
I'm parking the car, I'll be there in two minutes.
Okay, see you soon.
I love you, bye.
Hey. I'm uh, there. Thank you.
Hey. Sorry I'm late.
Hey, sorry , excuse me
Oh yeah, go ahead.
Hey.
It's already been leaked to the press? Alright we need damage control fast.
Let's get the crisis management team that dealt with the Southeast case. They were genius. Good, call me back.
What a day. I'm starved and I need a drink
Tell me about it.
I ordered some sake.
What was that all about?
I just got another case. Baseball player accused of taking steroids. And these shoes are killing me.
Why do you buy shoes that don't fit?
They do fit.
No, they donít fit, you have blisters, they don't fit. I mean they look great.
Well thank you, for 450 bucks they should look great. Oh I'm sorry
No, go ahead.
Hey. Let me speak with Jack.
Okay. Let's make this the doctors fault for not telling the patient what he was being injected with.
It's not about why it's in his system it's about how it got there.
This is about making the jury convinced the doctors responsible.
No loose ends, the trainer didn't save any syringes.
As far as I'm concerned my client thought he was getting B-12 shots or flax seed oil. Good
So, you're representing a ball player that took steroids?
It's just a malpractice suit.
How do you get a malpracitce suit from taking steroids?
Accused of using steroids the doctor injected him and he didn't know it.
I think you have a, mmm, problem there because the league policy is that the players are responsible for what goes in their body.
Mmm, that only sticks if the client is fully aware and in control which he wasn't.
Okay so the player didn't know what the doctor was injecting in his butt.
If my client hadn't just signed a multi million dollar contract I doubt anyone would care if he took steroids.
Well, he did just sign a multi million dollar contract.
The league has no proof.
Well that doesn't sound very innocent to me.
Ryder, my client thought he was getting injected with some vitamin cocktail or some cortisone tea to ease his pain.
Okay no no no, I understand it's a good argument. That's good.
I mean that I get to go into court tomorrow and get my two meth addicts off of armed robbery because they didnít know what they were smoking?
Why are you being such a jerk?
I'm not.
My client is a good guy with a family.
He cheated. I mean he cheated and then he hired the best legal council out there to, uh, you know make his actions seem acceptable.
How is it any different from you using the client as a product of an abusive home to justify armed robbery?
That's very different. -Really, why? How?
Well I'm not trying to argue that he didn't commit armed robbery I'm trying to say that maybe it mitigates the sentence.
Do you want to get that?
Yeah. I can hear you, don't worry. We still have a solid case, just find every paper and flood them with 'em so they don't find it and that will be enough of a distraction.
You know what the problem is, Anne? You just like winning too much.
I'm not doing anything illegal.
No, what you're doing is spinning a created truth when you and I both know that your guy tested positive because the masking drug didn't work.
Roger, not everything is black and white.
Okay, is that what you're going to tell the seven year old kid in Iowa who believes your clients a hero?
Look, the betrayal was between the doctor and his patient.
Okay, alright. You're right, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I really am.
It's okay.
I donít even know. I'm sorry I brought it up.
Anne. Will you- ummm-
Will you.
Just answer me this one thing, okay?
Do you really believe that your ball player is innocent?
I really have to take this.
Yeah, okay? Good. This needs to be discussed further.
It's not about why it's in his system it's about how it got there.
No, it's about convincing the jury the doctors responsible. That's right no loose ends, the trainer didn't save any syringes.
As far as I'm concerned my client thought he was getting B-12 shots or flax seed oil.
Okay good, yeah.
Did you just put a piece of sushi in your pocket?
Film Details ///
Lawyers
Ron Livingston and Saffron Burrows star in a story about lawyers in love, but not in sync.
January 4, 2010 Comments (148)
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148 Comments
What do you think? Leave a comment
January 9, 2010 by wweller
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February 7, 2010 by Anthony Massey
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May 7, 2010 by pao
sadly... you missed the point
June 14, 2010 by Wilma Jackson
I don't have a problem challenging you, first I suggest you make your soul mate legal. do to Gods word. other wise men or women shouldn't take each other for what that can get from each other. We should get to know our partner and more trusting in God and trust in each other and taking each other for broke is not correct.
February 19, 2010 by Buck McKibben
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
i agree with that!
July 21, 2010 by Julie
I also agree. More often than not, people who lack professional ethics also lack ethical behavior in their personal life, with friends, in their marriage and in dealing with the general public. Good for him and shame on her.
August 6, 2010 by jm
This piece was blatant propaganda. The female lawyer was acting ethically; the male lawyer wasn’t. Consider the male’s question as to whether the female lawyer believed that the sports figure was guilty. The first thing that every lawyer should learn, that EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD LEARN, is that only a jury determines who is guilty or not. The lawyer has no business letting their personal guess as to whether a client is guilty affect the client’s representation. If the lawyer started doing that, the lawyer would be substituting the lawyer’s judgment for the jury’s. That’s just wrong and UNAMERICAN.
If the client told the lawyer that he believed the shots were vitamins or medicine instead of steroids, then the lawyers has an ethical duty not only to the client, by to all Americans, to argue that point and let the jury decide.
The woman got off lucky. Who wants to marry someone who doesn’t understand the ethics of their own profession?
August 26, 2010 by pgobrien
The lawyer is bound by the tenets of our legal profession to provide the best defense the lawyer is capable of presenting, short of knowingly putting a witness for the client on the stand to tell lies (that's suborning perjury and it illegal in itself). The issue is not whether the lawyer thinks the client is guilty or not (that is irrelevant), the issue is whether the lawyer can present a defense without knowingly presenting lies. This clip did not show whether this lawyer was in possession of information (or a statement by the client that he was actually guilty), and so the jury is still out on whether we, the viewers, can form a judgment of the circumstances and know if the woman lawyer is honorable or not. Maybe the guy was right not to ask her to marry him, if he's unsure of her integrity. Maybe he's being unfair. We don't know. He should not have asked what she believes, though. He knows better. Maybe SHE should be wary of him.
March 3, 2010 by Juan
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April 9, 2010 by C
May 1, 2010 by Cecilia Ama Anderson
I think the guy may not be too sure about his own feelings because no relationship is perfect and taking his ring because an identified weakness in his fiancee should not end their relationship. Even in marriage, relationships still need to be worked and regulary to keep the love frame burning.
If he really loved Ann, he can share with her and help her understand what his position is when it comes to such situational ethics and building values for yourself.
Ann wanting to win all the time connotes the fact that she has a personality disorder where she has to use any means to win a case. Wanting to prove yourself all the time has its own underlying cause and I believe Reider can help overcome that weakness.
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
only ann can overcome her own weaknesses
July 5, 2010 by Gyurn Bjorkunson
I totally like agree like!!!!!!
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August 25, 2010 by Bonnie
I think he just put it back into his pocket because the timing was wrong. And he is going to wait for another time, when she has worked out the case and isn't so distracted. Timing is everything :-)
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November 24, 2010 by saleem
she is very good actor
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December 4, 2010 by Mb
Public Defenders are often called upon to make unpopular arguments to defend their clients, many of whom are murders, rapists, and well-established drug dealers, on grounds like lack of probable cause in arrest, improper Miranda warnings, improper waiver of right to trial and appeal, Batson violations, and improperly presented evidence at trial. The majority of these cases are losers—the errors made are ruled “harmless errors” by the court due to the overwhelming evidence of guilt of the charged party, but a statistically significant amount of these arguments and appeals result in the preclusion of valuable evidence, retrials, and vacated sentences. This is the role public defender plays in our legal system, and he or she is not unethical in making these arguments despite the fact that they know their clients’ are guilty. The tension between the guilt of criminals and the protection of our constitutional rights are in constant tension—and if unpopular arguments were not made and did not prevail from time to time, those rights would be rendered meaningless.
My point is that the guy in this short flick would make a terrible public defender because he rejects the fundamental premise that as an attorney you have an ethical obligation to make the best possible argument for you client under the law, regardless of what you think about his or her guilt—that it is wholly irrelevant. Arguing poverty and a harsh upbringing as a mitigating factor at sentencing is a tiny, tiny portion of the kind of arguments public defenders make. They also might try a case neither denying or confirming a person’s guilt, but by trying to show that the prosecution has not collected sufficient evidence to show guilt of the person beyond a reasonable doubt. This doesn’t mean the person is not guilty, it means that we as a society have chosen to place a high burden of proof on criminal conviction because we value our rights and freedom over simple efficiency in the criminal justice system.
That being said, the hypothetical malpractice suit that the guy finds so objectionable is a civil suit in which a ball player is suing a doctor for allegedly injecting him with steroids. Yeah the ballplayer cheated, but it’s not like the doctor is an innocent party either—he knew what he was injecting into the player— that it wasn’t medically necessary, and he violated his ethics as a doctor in doing so. Yeah, the lawsuit is frivolous and will be defeated, at a cost of several hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expert testimony to the plaintiff’s firm stupid enough to take the case if it is on contingency or to the ball player if he’s paying by the hour. Sorry that LM had to front the cost for this as pursuant to the doctor’s Med Mal policy, but hopefully they did their homework before writing the policy and have been charging him rates in accordance with his propensity to be sued for illegal medical practices. There are more empathetic doctors out there if you are trying to make a point about tort reform.
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January 29, 2011 by dougie
I feel he did what was right by putting the ring up because his passion about his side is too great. Oppisites do attrect but at the core of there actions there ethics and valuse have to at least be close or its going to be alot of Drama and fighting
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January 9, 2010 by Jeremy Gove
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February 10, 2010 by Greg Wotton
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March 30, 2011 by Jeremy
They are Korean characters, called Hangul. Kanji is a Japanese word for Chinese characters that are used in Japan, which those words are not.
March 27, 2010 by joe
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March 31, 2011 by Jeremy
I posted my comment because of the incongruity that I found quite striking. If it's supposed to be a Japanese sushi bar, why are the words in Korean? Most people don't notice that sort of thing, but to me it looks quite odd. Why is there no Japanese writing on the door? The restaurant looks very similar to scenes from Korean supermarkets, and yet here it looks like a high-class restaurant. It reminds me of Ecuadorians thinking of McDonald's as a high-class restaurant.
It also reminds me of the fact that Westerners tend to generalize Eastern culture, or easily confuse different Eastern cultures, such as the person who commented that the characters were actually kanji, even though they are unmistakeably Korean. Asians probably do the same sort of thing to us, so it's most likely a general human trait.
When I was reading the Korean, I realized that it could be interpreted to mean "week-old sushi". Maybe it was meant as humor. My Korean isn't that good, though, so I could be wrong.
January 13, 2010 by Keith Thompson
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
doubts are normal. read freud.
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January 14, 2010 by Robert Gold
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
i dissagree. from what i could see, they (the insurance co.) managed successfully to show us both sides: the honest and dishonest...the ethical and unethical...the educated and miseducated...the trust and distrust...the just plain ugly truth.
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September 12, 2010 by hmm
I agree with you. There's something shady about this...
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October 23, 2010 by Vance P. Frickey
Insurance companies, if they do seek tort reform, are acting in the best interests of all Americans. One of the largest causes of the ballooning cost of health care in this country is nuisance tort cases from wealthy attorneys after undesired medical outcomes. In the majority of these cases, not even the "preponderance of the facts" standard in most civil tort cases is met, yet juries have routinely returned multi-million dollar judgments for cases in which no malpractice was proven or even present.
The result? Higher co-pays for patients because now you're helping your physician pay his malpractice insurance; fewer people practicing in risky fields such as obstetrics or cardiology; higher insurance premiums because the health insurance industry must also pass along the cost of malpractice insurance and uninsured malpractice judgments from healthcare providers to their customers.
So, yes, they probably DO want tort reform. If you're looking for a villain in this issue, it's the national and local Democratic Parties, all of which are OWNED by lawyers who make their high livings from nuisance tort cases. Big Law has successfully fought tort reform off for fifty years. Go after THEM.
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January 14, 2010 by Michael
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April 27, 2010 by sarah
agreed ... thank you
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
nope. the more you have in common, the better it will be. why? because there will be less conflict - especially when agreeing on raising the kids. commonality creates a more stable long-term relationship. it's where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
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July 10, 2010 by Sandy
Personally, I think he did the right--the only--thing he could do. He lost respect for her and she apparently had lost respect for him a long time before because her cell phone had more of her attention than he did. Love is needed but so is mutual respect. Once respect is absent, one can't accept the person when they disagree. Believe me, I know.
By the way, these actors "happened" to be lawyers because that was a scene from an episode of a TV program. I watched it last week on Hulu.
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January 17, 2010 by gullsher
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January 18, 2010 by Rose Adler
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January 21, 2010 by brandi lynn nocole ramsey
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January 24, 2010 by genisa Ogden
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February 5, 2010 by robert roberts
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February 10, 2010 by Greg Wotton
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
right on!
March 25, 2010 by plex350
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April 23, 2010 by Cheri
I didn't see this as just a difference of opinions but a difference in values and morals. I am glad he did not follow his heart but his head in this situation. Finding the differences prior to marriage allow for an educated decision for life. Too many people excuse their actions by "compartmentalizing" giving them a reprieve of conscience when going against their supposed values. If those values were truly deep, they would not be able to push them aside so easily.
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January 29, 2010 by Laura Soderberg
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March 11, 2010 by office space
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June 27, 2010 by mitch
:O)
June 18, 2010 by Jim
Thank you. This is one of the fundamental issues in today's increasingly unethical world. You are right. A good lawyer does not compromise his or her integrity to in representing his or her client, nor does he or she lie or make false accusations to win for a client. What are law schools today are teaching as situational ethics is not really ethics, but an end run around the law and an immoral compromise.Our justice system was founded on principles of the presumption of innocence and the preponderance of all the evidence. Today, anyone accused, whether in civil or criminal court, is presumed guilty and required to "prove" that they are not guilty. On top of that, the most common technique of the legal profession to to hide evidence, to keep much of the evidence out of the courtroom by legal paperwork, and to prevent the discovery of such evidence. Depositions are carefully scripted by devious lawyers so that their clients are not forthcoming, but not actually telling a total lie. It is really a sad time, when daily honest, hardworking people of integrity are stripped of their livelihood and the life's work by unscrupulous, unethical attorneys out to line their own pockets and boost their egos. Just such a case is happening right now in my state, where three unethical lawyers and their unethical clients through apparent verbal fraud are destroying multiple small businesses, small banks and hundreds of jobs on the say so of a greedy liar making false accusations to line his pockets and the pockets of his friends.
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June 22, 2010 by Amy
That was a work of art. You write beautifully!
June 27, 2010 by mitch
amy, didn't you notice all the typo's?
June 27, 2010 by mitch
typoes?
July 9, 2010 by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot
The term "Intellectual Dishonesty" applies to much of what occurs in civil and criminal litigation. It is the reason for the excessive testing that doctors must order, as a means to practice defensive medicine. It is behind the absurd warning labels that are plastered all over every product that is sold ("Warning: High voltage electricity is dangerous"). It is the reason that American businesses are paralyzed by fear of junk litigation.
September 26, 2010 by :)
Hey guys, when I was I dunno, about 13, I hid my grades from my folks, did it a lot, and eventually, I got in to some trouble, and it sucked. My point is, at that time, my father taught me something that I find very very cool, the distinction between truth, and candidness. Honesty is wonderful, and I think maybe can be done in some situations without candidness, but candidness implies something like an effort to help the other side understand. Perhaps another way to look at it would be the opposite of lying by omission. And I dont think its appropriate in every situation, its just realizing that it exists. And yea, it was a Very good lesson from that dad of mine.
February 4, 2010 by brenda woods
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May 3, 2010 by Donna
I liked this movie. He felt that pain.
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February 5, 2010 by towing service
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