JUDGING THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF ‘L.A. LAW’

Even co-creator Steven Bochco thought “L.A. Law” would be a “scrappy underdog” in its first season on NBC last year, perhaps drawing critical praise but requiring time to build respectable ratings. Instead, the NBC drama about life in a Los Angeles law firm became one of the season’s biggest hits, catapulted its cast members to stardom and pulled down 20 Emmy nominations--one shy of the record for a weekly series. Today, two looks at the show and its fans in the legal community.

As Superior Court Judge Judith C. Chirlin recalls, she was “hooked from the opening minutes of the first episode.”

The body of senior partner Norman Chaney, already stiff with rigor mortis, one arm still clutching tax documents, was being wheeled from the upscale law offices of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak. Suddenly, the firm’s leading womanizer and all-round opportunist, Arnold Becker, stuck his head through the door and said, “I have dibs on his office.”

Chirlin, watching this tableau unfold on her television screen, remembers saying to herself, “This is reality. This is what a law firm is really like.”

Chirlin, who practiced civil law before being appointed to the bench in 1985, is just one of many lawyers and judges who find themselves addicted to NBC’s “L.A. Law,” which begins its second season this fall with 20 Emmy nominations--a near record for a weekly series (the leader is “Hill Street Blues” with 21 in 1981 and 1982).

The show seems to have attracted a huge following among lawyers nationwide, as a few real L.A. lawyers have discovered, sometimes to their distress.

Trial lawyer Howard (Pat) Boltz Jr., a partner with the Los Angeles office of Rogers & Wells, said that “wherever I travel in the United States, I’m approached by lawyers who want to know if that’s really what it’s like to practice in L.A. I don’t think it is a fair depiction of an L.A. law practice, but lots of people do and they watch it religiously.”

“I was trying a case in Chicago for 2 1/2 months, and all the guys I was working with were avid ‘L.A. Law’ fans,” said Geoffrey L. Thomas, a trial lawyer and partner in the Santa Monica office of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. “So every Thursday night, come what may, we watched it.”

The show has won critical praise--including many paeans from members of the legal community, ordinarily the sternest of critics. Their reviews, while generally upbeat, are mixed with some nit-picking and reservations about whether any real law practice could possibly be as enthralling as the world depicted on “L.A. Law.”

“The show is authentic, incredibly so,” said Jonathan Kotler, an attorney and a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. “You could put the names of real individuals to all those characters, except for fear of winding up in a defamation suit.”

“There are obvious signs that the producers have insider information” about the practice of law, said Superior Court Judge Alexander H. Williams III, who pronounced the show “fabulous, . . . very stylish and often remarkably sensitive.”

But McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak “get a lot more interesting cases than most of us,” said Thomas, with a trace of envy. “And the lawyers’ speechifying is far better than what you actually hear in court. They have better writers.”

“Much of what you see on ‘L.A. Law’ really does happen in a law practice, but the producers leave out the dull stuff,” said Westside trial lawyer Elliot Disner, who estimated he had seen 90% of the episodes.

“Some parts (of the show) hit home, and other parts are absurd,” is the verdict from U.S. District Court Judge Dickran Tevrizian. “I watch it, and generally I like it.”

Like many others, Tevrizian complained that McKenzie, Brackman take on an unlikely range of cases--everything from representing Fortune 500 corporations to penny-ante criminal cases that would be spurned by any firm with aspirations to greatness.

“It would be strange to have criminal work of that sort done by a top firm. The show mixes apples and oranges,” said Tevrizian, previously a judge on the Los Angeles municipal and superior courts.

Some of the early episodes of “L.A. Law” were judged jarring on ethical grounds.

Lawyers particularly faulted one episode in which Ann Kelsey, the character played by actress Jill Eikenberry, engaged in a contest of wills with an insurance company’s counsel over a claim filed by a black caterer.

The insurance company offered a paltry settlement, Kelsey rejected it and then declared that she would settle for nothing less than $1 million--with the amount to be hiked $100,000 a day until the company settled. The insurance company lawyer appeared in Kelsey’s office with a check for $1 million, only to be told he was 24 hours late and would have to come back with more.

“That whole story line was preposterous,” said Boltz, the Rogers & Wells lawyer who is not a fan of the show. “In the first place, a lawyer is obliged (by professional canons of ethics) to tell his client of any offer to settle. . . . Secondly, it’s preposterous that there could be a $100,000 swing in any settlement. And, in 12 years of practice, I’ve never seen an insurance company counsel personally present a check. It’s not done that way.”

But, to the producers’ credit, her colleagues criticized Kelsey’s methods, as several lawyers noted. “The other characters upbraided her for being so high-handed with the insurance company, for being more interested in a power play than her client’s needs,” said Thomas. “That helped.”

Serious objections were also raised to partner Michael Kuzak’s conduct in a criminal case in which he was representing an accused rapist, the son of a prized client. The charges were dropped because the rape victim could not bear the defense lawyers’ attacks on her character, but Kuzak (played by Harry Hamlin) tipped off a police officer that his client was carrying a concealed weapon without a permit--and then continued to represent him while befriending the rape victim.

“I don’t know of any defense lawyer who would behave that way,” said Judge Tevrizian. “It would be unthinkable.”

Boltz said he objects to “L.A. Law” because, like the old “Perry Mason” series, it creates “unrealistic expectations” on the part of jurors. “Jurors’ expectations about the presentation of evidence, about how lawyers should behave, are formed by what they see on TV,” he said. “They’ve come to expect compact and entertaining presentations,” with “an element of drama” that just does not exist in most cases.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Kelleher of Los Angeles is equally critical. “I’ve seen a little bit of the show, and I couldn’t stand it,” he declared. The courtroom scenes were “outrageous,” he said, partly because the lawyers, not the judges, seemed to be in charge. “Lawyers who behaved that way in federal court would be inviting contempt-of-court citations.”

Other lawyers and judges find more to like than dislike in “L.A. Law.”

“The show is funny, accurate and not very flattering to the legal profession,” said Kotler, who has practiced law for 16 years. “Lawyers aren’t heroes on this show, just people. Unlike Perry Mason, who never lost a case, they lose sometimes. . . . Lawyers who are irritated by the show, who think it’s inaccurate, haven’t looked in the mirror lately.”

The show’s depiction of the materialism of practicing law in Los Angeles, the emphasis on beach houses and fast cars, is especially apt, Kotler said. “I was once in a law firm where the big issue was whether to build a sauna, not because anyone was always jogging or working out, but to show we had arrived. There was also a great emphasis on hanging original art works on the office walls.”

Judge Williams, another fan, finds “remarkable sophistication” in some episodes. He admired a sequence in which Victor Sifuentes, the firm’s crack trial lawyer, represented a teen-ager who was about to be made a ward of the state because she killed her older brother. Sifuentes (portrayed by Jimmy Smits) argued, successfully, that she had killed him because he had been sexually abusing her. But before Sifuentes could congratulate himself, the worldly attorney for the state told him that, by returning the girl to her home, Sifuentes had won the battle and lost the war.

“As the (state’s) attorney pointed out, the brother had learned to abuse his sister from their father, and now she was going to be at the father’s mercy,” said Williams. “That was right on the mark.”

Almost universally applauded was an episode that showed the firm’s new associate, played by Michele Green, thrown into her first trial with little preparation or coaching. She tried to read aloud her notes, bungled the rules of evidence and then was told off by the judge.

“That was very realistic,” said Alan Yockelson, a deputy in the sex crimes and child abuse division of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. “Almost no one is happy with his first trial, though usually the problem is that you over-prepare and get put down by the judge for trying to be too eloquent.”

The trials on “L.A. Law” may be a bit idealized, say expert trial lawyers. “The show reflects litigation the way we’d all like it to be,” said Disner, the Westside trial lawyer. “By and large, the good guys win, justice triumphs, and fair procedures work. There’s very little dissembling or deception.”

Even the judges on “L.A. Law” are a cut better than real-life jurists, Disner said. “I’d say their judges do the right thing 95% of the time,” he said, “while in real life, judges are right maybe 75% of the time.”

Los Angeles judges say they like the mix of jurists on the show--men, women, blacks, whites, Latinos--but worry that those characters are not as fully developed as the lawyers. “The depiction of judges is not as realistic or sympathetic as the depiction of lawyers,” said Judge Chirlin. “The only episode that dealt at length with judges was about a judge who took a bribe,” which she considered “too negative. I happen to think we have a very honest and able judiciary in California.”

Yockelson, the deputy district attorney, also complained that the prosecutors too often are “hard-nosed, overbearing guys in polyester suits.” He says he is encouraged, however, that the show’s producers have started to “soften up” prosecutor Grace Van Owen (played by Susan Dey).

Like many legal professionals, Chirlin said what she admires most is the way the show “develops the relations among the lawyers, the byplay between judges and lawyers, so that everyone seems human and genuine.” The partners’ meetings at the firm are also “first-rate,” said Kotler of USC, because they “depict intrafirm politics, all the crazy personalities at work.”

More than anything else, the richness and variety of the shows’ leading characters have earned the show its following in the legal community. Even the villains--divorce lawyer Arnie Becker (played by Corbin Bernsen), who sometimes beds his female clients and his male clients’ wives, and the money-grubbing managing partner, Douglas Brackman Jr. (Alan Rachins)--have some redeeming qualities.

Despite the occasional legal lapses, “the atmosphere of this show is right, the feeling is right,” said Yockelson, the deputy district attorney. “I like these characters so much that I’d watch the show even if it were called ‘L.A. Accounting.’ ”