I’m torn between A Few
Good Men and A Time
to Kill.
Those are two of my all-time favorites.
Anytime they’re on, I’m glued to the
television. It’s because of the advocacy
that both Tom Cruise and Matthew
McConaughey portray in defending their
clients. It’s inspirational to any person
who wants to pursue a law career. It’s
what practicing law is really about: the
difficulties of the situations you might face,
and how you might have to really dig deep
to advocate for your client.
And don’t forget about Demi Moore;
I have to give a shout out to the women
attorneys as well.
JANET C. SCOTT / ASSOCIATE, SMITH
WELCH WEBB & WHITE; MCDONOUGH;
SCHOOLS & EDUCATION
Woman in Gold.
My favorite used to be A Time to Kill,
but then I was thinking about [a movie] I’d
watch again and again—and not just the
last scene where Matthew McConaughey
says, “Close your eyes” and drops that
bomb.
I saw Woman in Gold several months
ago and it became my new favorite. It’s
based on things that happened in real life,
has a wonderful combination of history and
culture, and shows how legal persistence
can pay off. Several times in the movie, the
client says, “We’re done, give up,” and the
attorney says, “There’s got to be some way;
this is an incredible injustice.” And they
keep pursuing little loopholes and going
into archives looking for the one piece of
information that’s missing.
It’s a great testament to never giving up.
LAURA BENZ / LAURA W. BENZ, LLC;
PEACHTREE CITY; ENERGY & NATURAL
RESOURCES
My Cousin Vinny.
It’s a classic story of a lawyer who is ill-prepared and has to trudge through it and
learn on the fly. Vinny frankly doesn’t know
anything about criminal law, and is thrust
into a system he doesn’t understand.
But he doesn’t give up; and at the end of
the day he prevails, as much as anything
because of his tenacity.
Probably my favorite scene is when he
asks an older lady to testify about what
she saw, he pulls out the measuring tape
and goes to the back of the courtroom and
she can’t see him. The other fact witnesses
are just as funny. He cross-examines one
witness about how long it takes to cook
grits. He didn’t even know what grits were
when he started, but by the end he knew
exactly how long it took to cook grits.
DAVID L. MCGUFFEY / ELDER LAW
PRACTICE OF DAVID L. MCGUFFEY; DALTON;
ELDER LAW
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LEGAL MOVIE? AS TOLD TO TREVOR KUPFER