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Real-life legal dilemmas don’t always play out like a Perry Mason episode. Yet over the decades, famous fictional lawyers (such as Mason, played by Raymond Burr, above) have shaped the public’s impressions of the legal process. Scholars from around the nation gathered to discuss the issue at the Marquette Law School’s Law and Popular Culture Symposium last fall.

Law professor Dr. David Papke estimates that about one-half of prime-time television depicts lawyers, police and private detectives.

He first noticed pop culture’s love affair with the law when he was working toward a doctorate in American studies. Intrigued, he took a closer look at the legal themes, characterizations and lessons depicted in movies, television and literature. With these findings, he co-authored the textbook Law and Popular Culture, published August 2007, and teaches a corresponding class to law students.

“I saw an interesting shift in the portrayal of lawyers,” Papke says, “from hero, the Atticus Finch and Perry Mason type, to everyman types in need of redemption, like Ally McBeal; men and women who have gone astray and have to regain a moral path in their lives.”

He also noticed a striking change in the character’s role, which flipped from counsel for the defense popularized in the ’50s and ’60s to prosecutor in the ’90s. “I think it’s a harder, less-yielding era when people are more inclined to identify with those who crack down on wrong-doing than those representing the unjustly accused,” he says.

Papke recognizes the impact such representations have on the public’s perception of lawyers and legal practices. He appreciates the dilemma faced by real-life prosecutors, who say they can’t measure up when pop culture presents the wheels of justice turning at lightning speed, with a suspect caught, evidence collected, jury impaneled and brilliant prosecution concluded in a 60-minute episode. Add in how easily extraordinary forensic evidence is obtained, as depicted in the television series CSI, and the challenges are apparent.

“In real life prosecutors don’t have such evidence at their disposal. Yet juries expect it and when they don’t see it, they are more likely to think there’s a hole in the prosecution’s case,” Papke says, describing what lawyers call “the CSI effect.”

Literature hasn’t been exempt. John Grisham, the lawyer turned novelist and America’s best-selling author in the 1990s, captivated readers with dramatic legal dilemmas.

Papke warns students against underestimating the importance of popular culture in contemporary American life. “For some Americans, what they see on television becomes their entire cultural experience,” he says. “It is especially important to law students to reflect on how laymen and women — their future clients — think about lawyers and legal institutions. There’s no better measure to alert students to law-related assumptions and expectations than how the law is represented for dramatic purposes.”

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Trial by TV: Pop culture meets law