American Bar Association love-in

The mailbox can be viewed as the enigmatic void into which man pours his hopes, unnamed and indescribable; the mailbox is a vessel waiting to be filled with a surprising liquid. Or not a liquid! --Even more surprising. When we wait for the mail, our glances out the front door betray our true base emotion: "I'm bored." The arrival of the mail portends not just seasonal milieu, but the possibility that our lives are about to be rescued, transformed - or at least that we can take five minutes out of our lives to peruse the pages of pumpkin-themed bakewear and tableclothes from Pottery Barn.

So this Saturday, the day holding little promise, I waited keenly for the arrival of The Mail. Bills, vegetable pricing, creditors seeking the ex-tenants of our rented abode ... I almost gave up hope that I could be surprised by the contents of the mailbox, until ...
The new issue of the American Bar Association (ABA) magazine arrived. Departing from the semi-self-important minutae of the great Practice of Law, this month's issue was frivolously carefree and self-indulgent; the hybridized product of several generations of the TV guide. I had on my hands an ABA love-in. Pictured above, the cover story is a hard hitting article on "the 25 greatest fictional lawyers" of all time - law's greatest heroes and scoundrels, for the layman tax attorney to aspire to. And they're all there! Harrison, Orson, Sam Waterston, George Clooney, Matthew McConnaughey, Tom Cruise, the guy from "Rumpole up the Bailey," Al Pacino! Yes, in good faith, the yearbook committee had commissioned an entire issue to the exposition of fictional law practice ... Hey, there's Ally McBeal!

In case the fever pitch of your excitement for a fictional lawyer issue interfered with your mental faculties, the inside title page helpfully lays out the identities of the characters united so cunningly through Photoshop. Like an old class photo, the names and mannerisms come back to you as you bask in the soft glow of nostalgia, thumbing over the stories and speeches of those movable icons, the Lawyers of American television and cinema.

No doubt, there was hot debate in the lead up to publication in the ABA office: how could they leave out Jim Carrey's "Liar, liar"? How did Ally McBeal make the cut? What about the Ally McBeal spinoff, with that Dylan McDermott? Is Orson Welles the lawyer any different from Orson Welles the *anything else*? Wasn't he always just Orson Welles? How did McConnaughey's John Grisham attorney beat out Matt Damon's Grisham attorney? Wasn't there room on the cover for Avon Barksdale's attorney, comically brought in everytime one of his boys shot someone on "The Wire"? Like a latter day Jon Lovitz, perhaps he wasn't glamorous enough to make the cut. But let me ask again: Ally McBeal? And Elle Woods doesn't make the cut?


Crowd-pleaser Vinny Gambini appears in the inside story, serving to complicate the matter of "just how serious are the ABA editorial staff?" Further murkying the waters is an ode to Atticus Finch by several of the sharpest legal minds willing to risk their reputations penning missives to a fictional lawyer. But Atticus is the original hotty totty attorney, and so a natural fixture of the "frivolous discourse on fictional characters" law-writing genre.

I can't wait for the "letters to the editor" in the next issue - legal arguments for and against inclusion of Paul Newman or Marlon Brando, proving once and for all that lawyers are anal beyond all other professions. Moreover, I hope someone will publish a conclusive list of "Hollywood falsities when portraying the judicial process" so I can finally rest in peace. Order!