Standing at the podium in Superior Court Department 9, I scribble my arraignment litany on the Indictment the judge’s clerk has handed to me. They’re the words I recite in this court weekly, the speech every other lawyer in the room has memorized:
Good Afternoon Your Honor, Karen Stefano appearing on behalf of Tut Williams who is present and in custody. Mr. Williams has been advised of the charges against him and waives formal reading of those charges. He has been advised of his constitutional rights, including his right to a speedy trial. He hereby waives that right and accepts a trial date convenient to the court.
I even write out Good Afternoon and my own name, that’s how concerned I am with becoming tongue-tied, screwing up in a courtroom packed with my peers: Public Defenders, other lawyers in private practice like me, DAs and bailiffs and clerks. It’s a tough crowd, often snarky, a group calling defense lawyers who never take a case to trial “Dump Trucks” for dumping clients by pleading them guilty. But speaking the litany I stand erect, shoulders back, lowering my voice an octave. It’s the voice of a serious woman, a woman not to be trifled with. Every time I stand at that podium in S-9 I buzz with insecurity. Please respect me, my body vibrates. Please take me seriously. The courtroom is nothing but theater.
The work leaves me raw. I stumble home exhausted. I pull something from the freezer, into the microwave, shovel food inside my mouth. I’m a woman so worn out at the end of a day all I can do is watch movies—Cher as a D.C. Public Defender in Suspect, Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde; Demi Moore playing sidekick to Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men; Sandra Bullock as another sidekick (go figure), to Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill, Glenn Close as Teddy Barnes in Jagged Edge. What amazes me in this inventory of fictional women is how they each tell some version of the truth.
***
With the opening credits for A Few Good Men we see Demi Moore as Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway, rehearsing her speech to the commanding officer, asking for a career-making case—defending the men accused of committing a Code Red at Guantanamo. She’s nervous, self-critical, and you know immediately that she knows she must be perfect to get ahead. Making the request, she fumbles her words, then learns she won’t get the assignment. “Don’t worry about it,” her male commanding officer says, “I promise Division will assign the right man for the job.”
Cut to Tom Cruise as Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee playing softball. Galloway resents his laziness, his refusal to take a case to trial, his penchant for plea bargains. He’s a Dump Truck. Jo Galloway outranks Tom Cruise by a mile. She’s serious, but not taken seriously—not until she proves herself—and she’s mocked by Kaffee after she chews him out: “Wow, I’m sexually aroused commander!”
We are all mocked for being too serious.
At Guantanamo, Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) makes sexually offensive comments to Jo, while Kaffee undermines her, condescends. The case escalates and Galloway’s the smartest, most prepared member of the trial team, yet Kaffee steals the spotlight.
Galloway and Kaffee go to dinner and as she mentions her background, her qualifications, Kaffee asks, “Why are you always giving me your resume?”
Her answer is simple. “Because I want you to think I’m a good lawyer.”
***
I want to see myself in these films—and I do. Women sexually harassed, spoken over in meetings, valued less than male peers. What I neglect to see in these characters are flaws, certainly not the flaws I possess—the exhaustion of being an introvert masquerading as extrovert, the weariness of feeling like a fraud, the fear I don’t know as much as my peers and adversaries.
I like to think the men and women who get me for a lawyer are lucky, even though most days I’m in over my head. Taking a case to trial is all-consuming. I have a strong work ethic, but am motivated to carry the burden of fighting prosecutors by my sole driver in this life: my need to be perceived as tough, competent, fierce. I have something to prove, though what that something is feels impossible to pinpoint. I spend all my money on clothes. Suits from Nordstrom, silk blouses, designer pumps with heels high enough to flatter my calves but sensible enough to permit swift navigation of courtroom halls, walks to and from the jails. I must project an image of success, to fool everyone into believing I’m killing it in this business. I keep the chip on my shoulder hidden.
***
Elle Woods. Sorority girl turned Harvard law student in Legally Blonde. She’s happy, unafraid to be over-the-top beautiful. She has the worst motivation for attending law school: to win back Warner Huntington, III, the ex who dumped her because he needed “a Jackie not a Marilyn” as the wife to propel his career. Elle never doubts her ability to get into Harvard though every authority figure in her life does—from her college counselor to her own parents.
Once at Harvard she speaks to Warner of winning a coveted internship in Professor Callahan’s criminal defense practice. “You’re never going to get the grades to qualify for one of those spots,” Warner tells her, adding, “You’re not smart enough sweetie.” This condescension propels Elle into action. Onscreen and in real life, having that chip on your shoulder—being told You can’t do that!—proves remarkably motivating. And so I’m rooting for Elle, with that shiny hair styled differently for every scene. She doesn’t worry about her voice, flaunts her femininity, and consequently no one takes her seriously. She’s sexually harassed (Hollywood sure got that part right), then accused by another woman of fucking her way up the legal ladder. But she persists. She’s simply herself—something I’m still learning how to be.
***
Flawed as they are they give me a sense of where I stand in my criminal defense world, they give me role models.
Hollywood never shows the mundane parts: sitting inside the jail watching precious minutes tick by, waiting for languid guards to retrieve clients from cells, or waiting for slack jawed court clerks to complete the paperwork I need to review line by line with my dyslexic client so he comprehends what must be done to comply with his terms of probation. And there’s the uniquely grotesque parts of this job, like standing in a courtroom holding cell counseling a client about his constitutional rights while another inmate takes an explosive shit on the lidless metal toilet in the opposite side of the room. And there’s never the scene of the female attorney arriving to the office at 7:00 a.m. only to realize she’s started her period early, she has no tampons, the bathroom dispenser has no tampons, and she wastes 20 minutes of her jump start on the morning because tying her suit jacket around her waist to cover a stain is not an option.
Yet somehow these movies give me peace. Flawed as they are they give me a sense of where I stand in my criminal defense world, they give me role models. Be more like Jo Galloway I tell myself. Go ahead, be Elle Woods. And it helps.
***
In the 1985 movie Jagged Edge, Glenn Close plays Teddy Barnes, a lawyer defending her dashing multi-millionaire client Jack Forrester, played by Jeff Bridges. Forrester stands accused of tying up his wife and murdering her with a hunting knife. During the film, Barnes is sexually harassed by the D.A., called a bitch by a witness in open court, and falls in love with her client. After fucking his brains out all night long, Teddy tells Jack on the morning of trial, “Wear a blue suit.” The lovers lock eyes and Teddy adds, “Juries like blue suits.” Jack giggles, awed by her moxie.
Maybe my libido is lacking, but on the eve of trial I’m more focused on my opening statement, on a good night’s sleep. But there’s truth to the sexual constancies in film. I did date a public defender for two years, a narcissist with whom breaking up had been on my to-do list for close to a year. I was also nearly raped by a judge I’d gone drinking with. (He’d pleaded to spend the night because he was too drunk to drive home.) I’ve been charmed by a few clients on the inside—their personalities beamed too bright not to be. But it shouldn’t surprise you to hear I’ve never slept with any of my hundreds of clients—not even close.
But I have fallen in love with my clients. Not romantic love, not sexual love, but love nonetheless because what else can you call it when you know that decades later you will still think about the men and women whose lives intersected so briefly with your own? When you wonder if they’re still alive, still addicted, still in prison, still funny and smart and wry? So much is an act but one part glimmers pure and true: my clients fascinate me. They’re all so real, so textured, so beautifully damaged and flawed. I’m not afraid of the darkness inside them, I’m intrigued by it. Our dark parts are the truest reflection of our humanity.
***
In A Time to Kill Sandra Bullock plays Ellen Roark. She’s so damn smart—coming to Matthew McConaughey’s rescue with the piece of case law he needs to shine in court (no credit given to her of course). Hollywood gets so much wrong—and so much right. The music guides me, tells me how I should feel—alternately scared, triumphant, disoriented. Such a soundtrack would be useful in my own life. Unlike Roark, I struggle through my days in court with no male lead to guide me.
***
Cher plays Kathleen Riley, a D.C. Public Defender in Suspect. She drives a piece of shit car (accurate, in my experience). Cut to a scene of her at home, working, eating Skippy peanut butter out of the jar (also accurate).
In their first meeting at the jail where her client Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson) is housed, he attacks her. I’ve never been physically assaulted by a client, but sitting across a jailhouse table from an angry man three times your size requires a certain suspension of disbelief. It’s like sitting on a plane although you don’t comprehend the physics of what keeps this behemoth of metal and bodies up in the air—you don’t think about it. You know this man can lunge across the table, snap you in two before the guards in the next room even notice. But you don’t think about it.
In a later scene Riley grabs a beer from the fridge in her office, telling her boss, “I spend all my time with murderers and rapists. And what’s really crazy is I like them.” Riley complains she hasn’t been to a movie in more than a year, that she wants to have a child but doesn’t even have a boyfriend. This is because she works All. The. Time. Cher’s character has no known female colleagues or friends. She’s a model for what female litigators are supposed to be, but with the tenacious quest for justice there’s a woman steeped in loneliness.
The judge chastises her—she’s being too aggressive in court. A woman wielding power is a frightening thing.
At trial where she’s defending Anderson on murder charges, she cross-examines a witness concerning the alleged murder weapon—a knife. The prosecutor objects that she’s turning the trial into a “cooking class.” Later, the judge chastises her—she’s being too aggressive in court. A woman wielding power is a frightening thing.
Hollywood gets so much wrong—and so much right. They never get the law part quite right, but they’re pretty damn good at nailing most of the womanhood part.
***
Why do I watch these movies again and again, reciting their lines out loud? Is this how I long for things to be? Do I lack real life role models? Do I crave neat resolutions because my own status as a woman in the law feels so uncertain? I know these characters are false but don’t care. They feel like friends, always there when I need them, asking nothing of me but to become a better version of myself—even if that version is idyllic.
***
Since my old favorites, TV and streaming services lead over films. I now have Viola Davis as Annalise Keating in How To Get Away With Murder. It’s a new level of over-the-top. (She shares her discovery files and outlines her entire defense strategy to a class of first year Criminal Law students she’s just met, invites them to her office to hear directly from her client. Really??) But she nails it as the no-nonsense law professor and her cross-examination skills are spot on: keep that witness under control at all times, phrase your question to permit nothing but a one word answer. (Once I learned to do it properly, cross-examination brought euphoria, a sense of strength and control. That’s where a sense of personal healing finally came to me.) But we see even Keating’s steely exterior is all an act—at least in part.
And of course we have a parade of female lawyers who seem to specialize in everything in The Good Wife, and The Good Fight. Glenn Close reemerges in Damages with slippery lawyering in cases bordering civil and criminal. But one thing remains constant over the years: these stories underscore the fictions and truths of what it means to be a woman pursuing her power inside our criminal justice system.
