History Main / AmoralAttorney

In reality, attorneys are simply acting and arguing on behalf of their clients, and are ''supposed'' to be [[YouKeepUsingThatWord amoral (not immoral!)]] in their advocacy.[[hottip:*:This leads some people to support the idea of abandoning their Adversarial justice system in favor of an Inquisitorial justice system, as in Europe. In an Inquisitorial system, you are entitled to a ''fair trial'' rather than a ''defense'' per se. Therefore, lawyers wouldn't be legally required to defend someone whom they know is guilty. Well, in theory. The details are complicated--for one thing, judges who have seen it all are more inclined to believe the prosecution than a random collection of 12 ordinary folks.]] An attorney is a true PunchClockVillain or PunchClockHero depending on who hires them. In fact, in some jurisdictions, like the UK, advocates ''have no choice'' who they defend: if approached, you must work for that client. Defense attorneys, in particular, are often very kind-hearted, civic-minded people who genuinely believe that even the worst members of society deserve a fair shake. Ideally, a strong defense of their client serves as an important check against false accusations, {{corrupt cop}}s, {{hanging judge}}s, {{kangaroo court}}s, and other forms of fast-but-unfair tyranny. Thus the defense attorney's arguments slow down the legal procedure for the sake of long-term accuracy. What an attorney should not be is ''unethical''. In trope terms, a good lawyer is (ideally) LawfulNeutral in practice and (dare we say it) LawfulGood in intention. In the wonderful world of fiction, however, cheat-to-win is the name of the game. After all, it's not much of a "drama" if the opponent isn't [[DesignatedVillain villainous and unlikable]], is it?

* ''GhostInTheShellStandaloneComplex''. One of these attacks Togusa on the stand after he shoots a rich cyborg kid, trying to make it seem like it was a cold blooded attack on the cyborg due to Togusa's supposed technophobic beliefs, instead of the fact that the cyborg was in the process of murdering his ex-girlfriend. When Section 9 discover that the lawyer is linked with elements plotting against it, he and his client [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident have a fatal road accident]].

* Self-proclaimed "Super Lawyer" Kitaoka Shuuichi (secretly Kamen Rider Zolda) from ''KamenRiderRyuki'' falls under this: he fights only for himself and refuses cases when he sees them as impossible to win, halfway frivolous, or he just doesn't like the client, although he gets enough characterization to qualify as an AntiVillain. [[spoiler:He defends the murderer [[AxCrazy Asakura Takeshi]] (later Kamen Rider Ouja), but knowingly withholds evidence that could have acquitted him. Asakura spends the rest of the series trying to kill Kitaoka.]]

* MichaelCrichton's novel ''{{Next}}'' features such a lawyer, Barry Sindler, who is delighted with the prospect of a genetics-related case because it will take months, increasing his fee. Also, from the same novel, Albert Rodriguez, the Biogen lawyer, who is ready to violate the Burnets' rights by finding loopholes.

* The classic CarlBarks DonaldDuck story "The Golden Helmet" (and DonRosa's sequel "The Lost Charts of Columbus") features corrupt lawyer Sylvester Sharkey working with con-man Azure Blue.
** Barks wrote his story shortly after he'd been through an ugly divorce with his second wife, and was presumably not a big fan of lawyers at the time.

* ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' has DashingHispanic Quinn Calle, a lawyer who specializes in defending supervillains. His main case in the story is that of a young woman who is undoubtedly guilty of hundreds of cases of assault, kidnapping, robbery, and one case of premeditated murder, the [[VillainProtagonist protagonist]] Taylor. He assists her in drawing up legal documents as part of her plan to extort the local authorities while being in their custody, and witnesses her murder two people, commenting only "I've handled worse."

See also EvilLawyerJoke, which originated by how widespread this kind of attorney is in fiction.

* ''GaryTheRat'' is all about an unscrupulous lawyer.

* Late in ''Series/CSIMiami's'' final season, the team determined that MalcolmMcDowell's character made a habit of finding ways to tamper with forensic evidence (breaking the chain of custody among other things) to make it inadmissible.

** Winston Payne didn't venture over here (probably because he was too incompetent to realize how the system can be fuddled) but his brother, Gaspen Payne, introduced in [[VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies Dual Destines]] is said to be one.

*** [[RolePlayingGameTerms Perhaps he had a high Charisma score...]]

** He's more like an inspirator and coordinator of a whole army of {{amoral attorney}}s. An explicit example is the protagonist, Kevin Lomax: while he does retains some moral qualms against defending a pedophile in the beginning of the movie, he more or less completely eschews them and becomes this trope.

It is worth pointing out that an AmoralAttorney is ''competent''. They do not bring silly {{frivolous lawsuit}}s —- that's the AmbulanceChaser. Although often unethical, this villain isn't necessarily ''corrupt''. Being {{Rules Lawyer}}s, they don't necessarily ''break'' the law to win, [[LoopholeAbuse they merely work around and within the law's limitations]] with the assumption that their opposition will be doing the same thing in their own favor (or at least that the opposition would be stupid ''not to'' and thus would deserve a sound thrashing).

* In one ''ComicBook/{{Grendel}}'' story, a highly successful and brilliant lawyer, whose sole moral lapse is having extramarital relations, is forced to become an AmoralAttorney for Grendel's organization. Grendel goes to some pretty extreme lengths to hire him: he starts by trying to blackmail the lawyer with photos of him and his mistress. The lawyer's response is to immediately confess to his wife, refusing to be blackmailed. [[MoralEventHorizon Then Grendel threatens to kill his wife and children.]] ''That'' convinces him. The lawyer's life is ruined since everyone around him, his friends and colleagues and family (who leave him), is disgusted by the lawyer defending the kind of scum that works for Grendel.

* Almost all the defense attorneys on the ''Franchise/LawAndOrder'' shows would fit this trope like a glove. Ironically, an episode of this once had an AmoralAttorney on trial give a very stirring closing argument about why defense lawyers were necessary, even though everyone hates them (he still got found guilty, though he appeared about year later, with it implied his conviction got overturned on appeal).

* [[http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/ebaumsworld Ebaum's World Dot Com]] is a massive TakeThat and [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Reason You Suck Song]] targeted at the proprietor of the titular website. It mentions that Eric has a team of AmoralAttorney prostitutes.

* Some continuities (such as the Batman newspaper strip, and ''Two-Face: Year One'') have [[Characters/{{Batman}} Harvey Dent]] turn into this ''very, very'' briefly after the acid hits and before he descends into CartoonishSupervillainy. He otherwise subverts this trope pre-acid, being one of the few decent men in the city's administration ''and'' as Two-Face, given that all of his KangarooCourt antics are generally excuses to kill people, albeit in an environment familiar to him.

* One episode of ''TheBill'' had a drug dealer pretend to be a solicitor so he could sit in on the interviews of his subordinates...

* Darrin Russom of HomicideLifeOnTheStreet. Defends most of the series' suspects.
* Maurice Levy of ''TheWire'', who not only defends the series' central drug kingpins, but introduces them to investors, advises them on who 'needs to go', and [[spoiler:sells confidential court papers under the counter to all comers thanks to a stooge in the courthouse]]

* CopRock: the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(public_relations) spin doctors]] hired by the legal team sing about how they will portray Vincent LaRusso as having shot the suspect in self-defense. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_asPVkC5Ts Cop Rock - No Problem]]

* For all it's deliberate caricature of the law, lawyers and litigants, ''HarveyBirdmanAttornyAtLaw'' actually averts this. None of the lawyers, not even the ones who were once Supervillains, ever do anything unethical.

%% Evil trope; No Real Life Examples, Thank You, you know the drill.
[[norreallife]]

[[quoteright:297:[[VisualNovel/AceAttorney http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/evil-lawyer_4140.JPG]]]]

* Averted with the District Attorney Thomas Mara from ''MiracleOn34thStreet''. Though he isn't doing something that's gets him a lot of popularity, prosecuting what's either a very nice old man or a holiday icon (depending on how you view it), it's only his job and he clearly doesn't have any malice toward Kris or his lawyer. He never pulls any immoral acts to win the case, has genuine affection for his family (which the defense use to their advantage) and the last time we see him he's rushing out of the courthouse to buy his son a gift.
** Played ''painfully'' straight in the remark; in this version, he's truly evil, and in the pocket of the film's antagonist.

Lawyers other than the main characters are typically opportunistic, unlikeable, arrogant, cynical, slimy characters, even more so [[CorruptCorporateExecutive the corporate ones]]. Lawyers come in various degrees of oiliness, but the worst defense attorneys will actually seem to know their client is guilty and act as though they just love seeing guilty people go free, and the worst prosecutors will ruthlessly hound defendants even when they personally acquire knowledge of their complete innocence. If the main character is poor and/or not that intelligent, the Amoral Attorney is the Goliath in the [[DavidVersusGoliath David v. Goliath]] scenario.