What Legal Dramas Get Wrong About Real Trials

Season 6, Episode 8: What Legal Dramas Get Wrong About Real Trials

What do legal dramas get completely wrong about the courtroom?

Karen Koehler, Mo Hamoudi, and Mike Todd take on Law and Order, The Wire, John Grisham movies, My Cousin Vinny, and even Drop Dead Diva to break down what Hollywood gets wildly wrong about real trials. 

From surprise evidence waved in the air mid-cross to rogue police officers kicking down doors, they explain why real courtrooms are slower, more procedural, and far less dramatic than TV would have you believe.

At the same time, they also admit that Hollywood gets one thing very right.

Trials are about story.

Karen shares how watching courtroom dramas shaped her trial style, including a five-minute cross-examination using a paper cup and water to explain a spinal injury. Mo reflects on the moment a juror pulled him aside after a murder trial and said, “Your story made sense to me.” They talk about monotone lawyers, long-winded closings, and why reading PowerPoints to a jury is a fast way to lose.

If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who lives for courtroom scenes, and leave a review telling us your favorite legal drama. 

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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State. 

Produced by Mike Todd, Audio & Video Engineer, and Kassie Slugić, Executive Producer. 

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Transcript

Picking The Topic And Favorites

Karen Koehler 0:06

All right, Mike chose the topic after we bickered about it for about 10 minutes. Yeah. And you came up with a lot of really bad ideas.

Mike Todd 0:16

Just one, I think. What's your favorite legal drama?

Karen Koehler 0:23

I've had so many favorite legal dramas. Um, and I I mean, I just I can't even name one. There's been so many.

Mike Todd 0:34

There has.

Karen Koehler 0:36

But we're gonna talk about what they get wrong, right?

Mike Todd 0:40

Yeah. Well, I would say my favorite for years was Law and Order. So I would use that one because they would use both sides. They'd have the police part and then they'd have the legal part. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Karen Koehler 0:54

All right. Well, if you guys watched it, which I didn't, uh my favorite ones were like Drop Dead Diva.

Mike Todd 1:02

Okay.

Karen Koehler 1:03

Um, you know, that kind of law and order. And I'll talk about that later.

Mike Todd 1:06

But Boston Legal.

What TV Police Get Wrong

Karen Koehler 1:09

Not really. You guys, what was there was there's doing so many.

Mo Hamoudi 1:13

My my two favorite legal dramas are somewhat uh akin to Law and Order. My favorite one was The Wire, which was on HBO that talked about the politics and of crime and the courts and policing in Baltimore, which was incredibly accurate in how policing was done and how the court system works. The second one, drama type, I just love John Grisham movies. And you know, it's not a show, but it's a movie. And he just, I think, like really does a really good job of trying to maintain the nonfiction aspects and and having respect for that, but entertaining and entertaining you and putting in the drama aspect of it.

Mike Todd 1:54

What's your favorite one?

Mo Hamoudi 1:55

I mean, my favorite John Grisham is the Rainmaker with Matt Damon and Danny DeVito.

Mike Todd 2:03

What am I like uh speaking of Danny DeVito? Well, that's what we he would call him the uh paralegal. That's paralyer, paralyer. Paralegal.

Mo Hamoudi 2:15

Yeah, yeah. But that that was that was I thought one one of my the first uh What about my cousin Vinny?

Mike Todd 2:21

Oh that's that's a great one. Oh my god. Also, also Danny DeVito. Yeah, yeah. All right.

Karen Koehler 2:27

Well, without you know, without having to recount what all of them are about, let's just talk about some of the things that we've seen in either court courtroom drama, like the verdict, you know, courtroom drama movies or shows that are really pretty much completely wrong.

Mike Todd 2:43

Yeah, but teach people things that are wrong about the law.

Karen Koehler 2:47

Yeah.

Mike Todd 2:48

For instance, um what is it called when they read you your rights after you got a after you get arrested? Miranda rights. Yeah. Do they get that wrong a lot?

Mo Hamoudi 2:59

I mean, I've never paid attention to the words that they're using, but generally they that's a hard one to screw up because like the script, it's on the card. So I think they get I could I'd be surprised if somebody got that wrong. You know, but what they get wrong is that like a lot of the times when they have the police officers go into somebody's house and like find ways to like get into the house.

Mike Todd 3:24

They're literally illegally, illegally, yeah.

Courtroom Myths About Evidence

Mo Hamoudi 3:27

They're like literally breaking into the house. And I'm like, no, no police officer would ever do that. Or like a police officer goes rogue, he goes, No, I'm just gonna do this. And they're like, call it in. And then and then the police officer goes, No, um, I gotta go. Nobody does that. I have nobody, nobody doesn't call it in, forgets the radio, and just kind of decides, like, you know, I'm the hero, I'm gonna figure it out. So that's I've seen that, they get that wrong a lot of the times.

Karen Koehler 3:54

Well, on the the lawyer stuff, yeah. I mean, there's I can't even like it's always wrong. It's like if you were a doctor watching a medical show, you would just be going, I'm gonna suspend my disbelief and watch this. Well, yeah, that's you cannot watch for a lawyer to watch a legal show, you cannot watch it critically. Because that's not how it works in real life, almost ever, other than the concept of it. And the reason is because it's not that exciting in real life. Well, even if it is, it takes so much longer. Yeah. Like if you're watching a courtroom drama, it's done. The courtroom part of it's over within 20 minutes or so. Max. And that would be a long case. Yeah, that would be a long case. That would be a huge one. Um, you know, and then you have a lot of times you have these grand opening statements that are real argumentative. Um never. You're not supposed to argue an opening statement. It doesn't really work that way. And the prosecutors are often very argumentative across and and you can't, as a prosecutor, you have extra duties um to the public that doesn't allow you to cross over the line to the extent that they do. The evidence rules don't almost exist, just everything comes in, you know.

Mike Todd 5:18

You're in the middle of the yeah, yeah, the last minute evidence coming in.

Karen Koehler 5:21

If you're in the middle of examining someone and your your person your your private investigator or paralegal comes running down the middle of the court with the you know, the evidence waving it in the air, I got it, I got it, and and you win the day. This is all just baloney. But it's entertaining the general concept is right, but let's just talk about evidence, for example, in a civil case. Yes. First of all, you gotta disclose it. Way ahead. The other side gets to vet it. Um, you can't hide it unless it's impeachment evidence and there's some wiggle room on that. Otherwise, it's gonna be barred. The court won't bar it unless they have a particular hearing to make sure that it that the reason for the failure to produce was based upon total surprise. You had full due diligence, and this was beyond your control. And and at that point would probably take a recess and let everyone do what they needed to do before going forward. There's just so much procedure that is left out. The judge isn't up there just saying, overruled, granted, they're up there in real life.

Mike Todd 6:33

Well, they're making decisions on stuff that you guys bring up to them. It's not like they're just like you said, it's not like they're just sitting there. There's stuff coming that they have to read or that they have to go back to their chambers to look at. And I mean, like you said, it's also I mean, you're not even describing correctly how slow it is, I feel.

Karen Koehler 6:51

It's like if you took from your perspective as a non-lawyer, tell us how slow it is.

The Slow Grind Of Real Trials

Mike Todd 6:57

Oh, it's extremely slow. So get to court and it starts at you know 8 a.m. or whatever. You guys will get in there and both sides will be talking to the judge for like a half hour, and that's if everything moves along. Some like I said, sometimes you'll have something that you give to the judge that they have to go back and read. So he'll stand up, everyone will stand up, he'll go back into his chambers, and that's gonna be 20, 15, 20 minutes before anything happens. If that happens several times, you know, you guys aren't starting until like 10 o'clock. And then one, you know, then it's like an hour for everything that happens after that, usually, or maybe 30 minutes. So it takes a long time for stuff to happen. And it's a lot of talking.

Karen Koehler 7:53

It's a lot of monotone, too.

Mike Todd 7:55

Yeah, a lot of talking at the same volume and the same.

Karen Koehler 7:58

A lot of a lot of trial is very monotone. Um, a lot of it is there's no combativeness in it.

Mike Todd 8:06

Um Well, that's what I was gonna say. It's like, you know, on the shows, there's they're always both sides are always talking back to the judge. And I mean that would end the trial sometimes. Yeah.

Mo Hamoudi 8:21

Well, I like it to an example of how totally like not connected to reality something in court is is do you remember the movie A Time to Kill by John Grisham? Oh yeah. Okay. So there's a scene.

Karen Koehler 8:35

Which was the book.

Mo Hamoudi 8:36

Which was the book. The book is better than the movie.

Karen Koehler 8:39

And there's a sequel that's not as good.

Mo Hamoudi 8:41

Um so spoiler alert. There the the um there's a scene where Matthew McConaughey is the lawyer defending um Samuel Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson, who kills a man who has uh raped his daughter and almost killed his daughter. And so he he's on trial for murder.

Mike Todd 9:01

Wait. He was a black guy, and the guy that killed his daughter was a white guy, right?

Drama vs. Procedure In Movies

Mo Hamoudi 9:07

White guy, yeah. Yeah. And then and then so uh uh um um the Sandra uh Bullock is this young, aspiring lawyer who says, I want to come work on this case, I have a lot to offer, and uh so she's assisting him. So uh the state, his defense is insanity, that I'm not guilty by reason of insanity. I went insane learning this fact about my daughter. So the state puts on an expert who's a doctor who runs a state hospital, and he evaluates them to come testify that no, he is sane. He was completely sane when he killed this guy. This defenses Bullocks. And uh Sandra Bullock, to help Matthew McConaughey, goes to the hospital, okay, to try to dig up some facts about this doctor, impeachment material, right? She falsely represents who she is, gets into the hospital and goes digging into files and discovers that this doctor has found everybody in his hospital insane because uh because he wants them to be in the hospital so he can get paid. Then she runs over in the middle of cross-examination and she says, in the middle of the, and then and then he goes back and takes the files, and then he goes up, and then he impeaches them by saying, wait a minute, you were saying my guy is sane, but everybody you've ever evaluated you found insane. So that means that you find people sane when it's for trial for the purposes of the state, but insane when you want to have them in your hospital and get paid. Okay, this would not have ever happened. Why?

Karen Koehler 10:57

Well, and the thing is, John Grisham was a lawyer however many decades ago.

Mo Hamoudi 11:02

Yeah, but first of all, she would be disbarred. She would be arrested for doing this.

Karen Koehler 11:07

Also HIPAA violation.

Mike Todd 11:09

Oh, yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

Mo Hamoudi 11:11

I was just watching, I was like, this person was acted as a criminal, like to basically go say, you know.

Karen Koehler 11:17

You gotta you gotta suspend your disbelief.

Mo Hamoudi 11:19

Oh yeah. But yeah, the other, but the other thing is the state would have had to disclose that material about that doctor ahead of time. And so it just to me, I was like, okay, this is not real, but this is entertaining.

Karen Koehler 11:29

It's very entertaining. And and you know, there's we could just keep going on and on and on about the things that are wrong because it's primarily wrong. Yeah um, but there's a lot of lessons to be learned for a lawyer who wants to try a good case to watch TV. There's a lot of good lessons. One number one lesson is monotone is not good.

Mo Hamoudi 11:51

No.

Karen Koehler 11:52

Being scripted, not good.

Mo Hamoudi 11:55

Long-winded, not good. Yeah.

Karen Koehler 11:57

Taking a really long time to present your case. Yeah, not good. Talking about a lot of irrelevant stuff, yeah, yeah. Not good. What TV does is it gets to the heart of it. It's very dramatic. A lot of emotion, a lot of action, you know, a lot of gasping, heart palpitations, you know, surprise witnesses. You know, that's I wish we could do that, but we can't.

Mo Hamoudi 12:21

But I've always wanted to do that.

Karen Koehler 12:24

I mean, isn't that just what you want?

Mo Hamoudi 12:25

Yarner, I call to the stand, the door opens, so and so. And everybody goes, and then somebody in the background in the corner goes, dun, dun, dun. And I just want to see somebody do that. I just feel like, yes.

Using TV To Improve Advocacy

Karen Koehler 12:41

Can I just say though, that because I do, I'm one of those people that have a lot of things going on in my head at all all the time. There will be times when I am trying a case actually in court um and thinking this could be in a movie. Or when I'm thinking about it afterwards. I'm I I or even in depositions, I'm like, yeah, this should be in a movie. Because I mean here's an example. It's a case that that uh it was a great case. It was a burn, burn case, and it was at a commercial site. This guy's employer, but we were suing this product, and we already knew what these people are gonna say because we've taken their depositions. So we were calling one of the supervisors who was gonna lay another brick of foundation for our case. And in the middle of his testimony, he goes off script. And we're like, Well, that's not what you said in your deposition. I mean, that's how you impeach someone, right? Didn't you say in your deposition so-and-so-and-so and so? And he says, Well, that's when I used to work for that company, but I don't work there anymore, so I don't have to lie anymore. Oh, see, that's and that's a moment where everyone at, oh, you get the Oh, but we're on the receiving end of it, and I'm just like, okay, I'm putting my Chinese grandpa's face on, which is completely immobile, and I am gonna get through this, which I am. This should be in a movie. And yeah. I hate that. But those moments, and like I said, one of my favorite legal non-dramas is Drop Dead Diva, where I don't know anything about that. Okay, what Drop Dead Diva. The premise is this model very it's very, very much playing on stereotypes. There's a model, and she's very unintelligent, but very sweet and kind, flighty and dramatic, and obsessed with, you know, she walks, you know, you know, this anyway, like Barbie. And she is in a car and driving through LA, and she gets hit hit by a car and gets killed. At the same time, there's another woman about her age, who is a lawyer in her office. I think it's a family law officer. She's working, slaving away at her desk. She is frumpy, unkept, extremely intelligent, um, working, and somebody comes in to have a dispute with her boss and shoots, but misses and kills Jane, the attorney. So the the model, whose name I forget, and Jane's souls go up to heaven, and then there's a mix-up, because one of them is not gonna die, and there's a mix-up, and the model's soul or whatever comes back down into Jane the lawyer's body. So she's no longer the same person. Now she's got this whole she is still smart, yeah, and she still knows the law, yeah, but she's got a totally different personality. And it's very entertaining. She's a very good actress, obviously, to be able to pull that one off. So I would be in trial. I this is an actual case. I was in trial. There was an uh um neurosurgeon up on the stand and he had just said it was a surgical back injury case. He had some said something because this this person had had pre-existing uh degenerative disease of their spine, and he was making comments of yeah, you know, this surgery either wasn't needed, or if it was needed, it was just a furtherance of their prior condition, and they're really there was really no injury from this collision. And so I remember thinking, okay, I could go up and I could take him apart step by step. It would take me probably two hours, right? But I've been watching Drop a Dead Diva. And I'm like, how can I make this point? What would Drop a Dead Diva do? Oh, I did.

Mo Hamoudi 17:04

And what happened?

Storytelling That Sticks With Juries

Karen Koehler 17:05

So I just I took a paper cup, I filled it with water, I walked up there, I put my raincoat up on the bench, and I said this cup is the disc, and the water is the fluid in the disc. And you can have a tear in the cup, and the fluid can still stay in the um the water will still stay in the cup, right? Um but if you tear it a little bit more, some of the water could dribble out, right? And if you tear it all the way, then so just the fact that you had a tear in that cup, like you had a pre-existing injury. And I mean, I made a big mess. Like the water was all over my cup, but it was such a visual little thing. That's very good. That was my entire cross, and I sat down. It was done in five minutes. Most of the time, me setting up the full of the water, yeah. And so that's what I like about watching some of this stuff, which is just so there's just no way. But it does remind you that that doesn't mean that there's not a better way that we can do what we do, especially in a society that has a very short attention span and where your jury comes from all walks of life. And so that maybe they don't speak vertebrae and you know, pre-existing condition conditions and this other stuff that we talk about. So I really enjoy and appreciate uh the uh the the movies and all of that, as you know. Yeah, yeah.

Mo Hamoudi 18:40

I think that uh that's a benefit of what of of learning how to succinctly, clearly, and quickly put on a case in a way in which appeals to the audience that matters most, the jury.

Mike Todd 18:53

I don't know. Well, and I think just acting in general. I mean, they're you know, it's acting, so you kind of learn a little bit about acting, which is you know, like you said, at times when you're doing your opening and closing, it's you're kind of putting on a show.

Karen Koehler 19:05

Well, you're what you're doing is you're making sure that your personality is all the way out there to the extent it needs to be, which is elevated. Um, but the drop dead diva, I still think about drop dead diva all the time. I did it in the John Henry Brown case and closing argument when he gave this very long, like one and a half hour closing, and I got up there for rebuttal. And I just thought, as I always do, well, I could go point by point by point and address everything, and it would take about half an hour, and I could do that because that's rebuttal can go as long. But instead, I did a mantra about following the blood and follow the blood, follow the blood, follow blood, you know, and just laid it all out. And it took like five minutes, and it was like really interesting. So the ducks, you know, dressing up. It's all about the concept for me. I guess this is this is why I do it, and I've done this for a long time. What is our job? Our job is to relate and connect and to advocate. How are we gonna do that? By lecturing people? Is that persuasive?

Mike Todd 20:19

No.

Mo Hamoudi 20:20

No.

Karen Koehler 20:21

Are we gonna get up there and and read from our paper and make a jury fall asleep while they're sitting there? Are we gonna put up a PowerPoint and turn our backs on the jury and read the PowerPoint because we think that that's different than reading our yellow page? Are we gonna talk about every single detail and not edit it? Are we not gonna have a theme? Are we just gonna talk data points? That's how you lose a trial.

Mike Todd 20:45

Yeah, so remember the jury's gonna go back and have all that information anyway. So if if they and if they haven't started to think about the facts at that point, I don't think that running through them in closing is gonna make them any more knowledgeable than they were before you did that.

Karen Koehler 21:02

Well, and remember this what do people remember, even in a short span of time? Yeah, the data is gonna go in and out, it's gotta stick somehow. How are you gonna make that data stick? And I think you should watch more movies and TV and and see how it sticks. And what sticks? What do you remember? Yeah. Do you remember you guys remember the details? I don't remember that stuff. I remember, yeah, I really liked watching it. That was really fun. I remember a few things because I'm on to the next thing I want to remember. So I don't keep a lot of stuff in my brain.

Mike Todd 21:36

I remember scenes. I can remember the scene with Sandra Bullock and him in the in the like rib place talking about the case and him living in his office most of the time during the case. What was it? There was always did they burn Samuel L. Jackson's house in that too? Yeah, they let it cross. Yeah.

Karen Koehler 21:56

Oh, yeah. The lawyer's house. So yeah, I got that right.

Mike Todd 22:00

Yeah. I do remember some of the movies.

Real Moments More Powerful Than TV

Mo Hamoudi 22:03

The most the most uh I think I think the revealing thing that a juror said to me was when I'd gotten out of law school, and within like the first two years, I was I was trying a murder case with another lawyer. And after the case was over, um, a juror walked up to me in the courthouse, it was in San Francisco Superior Court and pulled me aside and said, Um, hey, I just want to tell you, your story made sense to me. And and so uh and and um and then he said, I want to know what happens, you know, because the jury doesn't get to be at sentencings or future proceedings. I really want to know what happens. Uh do you mind um uh just following up? Here's my contact information. But your story made sense to me, it made sense to us. And I think that like that was immediately made me realize, oh, wait a minute, this is not much about this, this is about telling the story and making sure your story makes sense to people who are not lawyers. So that was a really good lesson that I learned.

Karen Koehler 23:16

I don't know if I told you this, but you know, we're getting ready for another trial. It's it's very graphic, and we're gonna have to make sure the jury's okay watching it, some or seeing some of the evidence, because you have to see it. Um, but there was a trial that I did where I I asked, in a case of sensitive, are you gonna be able to look at evidence that might, you know, make you queasy? And it wasn't even that graphic of a case, and everyone said, Yeah, no problem, no problem. And I did an opening statement. This is Mark's case, measlem. And it just had some this is a man whose car he had been uh injured by a truck, and I can't believe he wasn't decapitated because his vehicle went under the trucks somewhat. Um, and he was terribly injured, uh, and he had had a lot of surgeries, and so we had one of those boards that showed all the different procedures he had, and we were just generally just touching upon them and opening, and one of the jurors started to faint, and you know, everyone came to her aid, you know, pause, very embarrassed, apologize. And she said, you know, when when she asked me, talking about me, when she asked me or us if any of us was queasy, I really just didn't. I've never had that experience before. I I didn't think that I had any kind of problem. Yeah, but after, you know, when when this I I felt like I knew that person and I had this connection to this person who'd gone through this, and something about that, it just it was really personal to me when I saw that. And that's what I talk about making a connection with the jury so that they are feeling, thinking, understanding your case, your client, the whole thing, the experience about it. So that's what that's what the benefit that we've gotten out of watching how the industry, the entertainment industry has portrayed the law and why it still does. Why, why does it keep doing it? Because there are so much drama moments in it, and it is part of real life, and it's very interesting. It's just that the way that we do it, lawyers in general.

Mike Todd 25:33

Well, you have to follow the rules and and it takes a lot longer, like we said. And but I think that the like that's what I was gonna say, is I I do think that the movies and TV sometimes get what people don't understand, you know, like people who say, Oh, they're just trying to get money, or or something like that. They don't understand how people's lives are impacted by some of the stuff that we have to deal with. I think some of the TVs and movies get that aftermath of of what the what our clients kind of have to deal with and what their lives are after the trial. Um So sometimes I think people get a better idea of what happens, but I think in general they don't.

Closing Thoughts

Karen Koehler 26:17

Well, lawyer, it's a lawyer's job to be compelling and to create a story. When you said that, it reminded me of a there was a brain injury case of a person who was 18 when she suffered this severe brain injury. It was down south. We tried it at the bottom of the state. And she didn't attend the trial. Like there was no way that she should attend the trial. She survived it, but she had a you know very bad injury to the brain. And sometimes when you when you injure the brain in a specific way, she had what's called a diffuseonal injury, basically resulted in a stroke. That's it's and as you know, a strokes, one side of your body. So if you are insulted on the right side of your brain, your left side is gonna show as being impacted. And she had that kind of an injury, and I and the high drama of that trial, and there was a lot of drama, was when she came into the courtroom to give her testimony, and you know, she had major braces on her legs because now you have drop foot, even it's not though it's not a spinal cord injury, your whole side has been affected. So it's as if you have been partially paralyzed on part of your side. And she came in. I just can remember her, she was so young, not 20, walking in, you know, with spasticity, and just how the jury just watched her, and how they watched her, you could feel them care for her and just urge her to that chair. And she didn't testify long, and then she had to walk back out. And so it in many ways, real life drama in trial is so much more it's so much more profound, obviously more real, more touching, life impactful than anything you could ever watch on TV.

Mike Todd 28:23

I agree. I agree.

Karen Koehler 28:26

That's it, folks.

Mike Todd 28:27

Yeah.

Karen Koehler 28:28

Because I like to be right when we end.

Mike Todd 28:30

Okay.