Imagine you are a partner at a big law firm downtown looking for an associate lawyer, and a young man stumbles into your office, carrying a mysterious suitcase, pretending to be one of the candidates for the associate position. You are about to call for security when he proves he knows the law via photographic memory even though he never went to law school. Do you hire him on the spot or do you get him arrested? 

If you said the latter you would be legally correct, but according to the plot of Suits, you would be dead wrong. The entire premise of the show relies on the decision by Harvey Specter to hire someone who never went to law school as an associate lawyer. How is it possible you ask, that a show about the law would condone the illegal action of hiring a fraud as a lawyer? 

Short answer? Drama, and the need to keep things spicy. 

Apparently, the TV producers behind the early 2010’s show really thought the law itself was boring to watch, and thus had nearly every single character in the show break the law to feed into the intriguing irony. 

As much as the show is entertaining, as someone who is studying for the LSAT and plans to go to law school eventually, I wanted to gain a taste of what lawyers do for a living – but I ended up having my disappointment turn into horror at the amount of errors, inaccuracies and worse – broken laws – that happen within the span of each episode. 

So I reached out to Trinity College Alumni and associate cybersecurity lawyer Raajan Aer from Toronto-based law firm Fasken to discuss what being a lawyer is truly like and bust a few myths about the show: 

 What are the top qualities a lawyer must have?

“The most important one is probably integrity. There are so many sensitivities in being a lawyer. Somebody is coming to you for your expertise in a particular area and you owe them a duty. You owe them many duties: to communicate with them in particular ways and to fulfill various obligations. So making sure you meet those obligations that you have to your client is the first and foremost thing.”

 “It helps to have an interest in problem-solving and really wanting to kind of grapple with the difficult questions, and figure out how to take something away from difficult situations, and how to move forward from them.

“It helps, at least in my area, to be a good writer and a good communicator. A lot of what we do is writing legal opinions to clients or writing legal documents like factums or motion materials that get filed with the court and you’re trying to convince someone to do something. So being a strong writer is helpful because you want to make sure you’re getting your points across the way that you intend to, and that your reader is getting [your points across] without confusion or complications.” 

While Mike Ross certainly is a great communicator and problem solver, because he is inherently a fraud pretending to be a lawyer, he lacks integrity, and thus any case he touches would have the grounds for a civil suit on the pretense that he is not a real lawyer. His clients would suffer as a result. 

The LSAT does NOT prepare you for law school and in turn, being a lawyer. 

Despite being the only standardized test every student aspiring to be a lawyer must take, according to Raajan who has taught the LSAT, the test doesn’t really prepare you for law school. Rather the LSAT prepares you for taking the test. It teaches you learnable skills such as logical reasoning, analytical reasoning, reading comprehension, and argumentative writing. These are important skills to have as a lawyer in general, but taking the test multiple times (like Mike Ross has) does not guarantee that you will be a good lawyer. Rather, to be a good lawyer you must learn skills that are taught to you in law school as well as on the job in the law firm. Mike’s super photogenic memory could not save him even if he were to try pretending to be a lawyer in the real world. 

Winning is important, but you also have a duty to uphold. 

One of the important things to know about Harvey Specter is that he loves to win, and he will do anything to win. I mean anything, including but not limited to intimidating opposing counsel’s witnesses when their lawyers aren’t present, blackmailing, and colluding with the opposing counsel to strike up a deal.

According to Raajan, winning is one of the main reasons a client hires a lawyer. They want a lawyer who will be able to advocate their objectives in a persuasive manner, and thus you are expected to do whatever you can to help your clients. 

That being said, Raajan explains that lawyers have an obligation: “You have duties as an officer of the court to make sure that justice occurs… Obligations go beyond your client, you also have obligations to opposing counsel and parties, and obligations to the public.” All of these must be balanced out and respected. 

This means that when Harvey intimidates witnesses, blackmails, and colludes with the opposing counsel, he is breaking these obligations to ensure justice occurs. 

Writing a Motion does NOT take 48 hours

One of the common things that happen in the show is just how fast-paced everything seems to be in the firm: From needing a motion within 48 hours, or giving the legal team a week to find a key witness, everything is incredibly fast and urgent. However, according to Raajan, a lot of the work done in firms actually takes up a chunk of time. “In reality, like some cases I work on can take 10 years to get through all the courts before they’re completed. And, more realistically, a vast majority, I think some people think it’s anywhere between 95 to 99 percent of cases, at least in the civil world, get settled. They don’t actually go to court for a final determination.”

It makes sense. After all, it takes years for a law to get passed, why would TV producers assume it takes 24 hours to get anything done? 

Probably because a winding-down clock is the best ticking time bomb of suspense. The stress of finding a key witness or passing a motion is treated as a life or death situation, especially when a lot of the deals in the show are strung together with the looming threat of Mike Ross’s secret as a fraud being exposed. It certainly keeps you binge-watching, but at the same time, it is incredibly inaccurate. 

So to conclude, Suits may be one of most entertaining classics of the 2010’s, and has been recently popular due to Rachel Zane’s actress Meghan Markle becoming a British Royal, but it is not the best source for aspiring lawyers to learn from. 

If you want a better show that is a more accurate depiction of the law profession, consider watching The Good Wife or Extraordinary Attorney Woo – these are Raajan’s and my personal picks. 

But in reality, the best way aspiring lawyers can learn about what lawyers do is to simply reach out to a lawyer and ask them.

“We’re a pretty friendly bunch, even if we don’t look like it. But oftentimes, we’re very helpful. We’re very willing to help especially students who are interested in pursuing law as a career path. I know a lot of lawyers would respond to messages on LinkedIn if you shot them [a message]. I would reach out and get the information right from the [source].”