The Lecture is an ancient device that lawyers use to coach their clients so that the client won’t quite know he has been coached and his lawyer can still preserve the face-saving illusion that he hasn’t done any coaching. For coaching clients, like robbing them, is not only frowned upon, it is downright unethical and bad, very bad. Hence the Lecture, an artful device as old as the law itself, and one used constantly by some of the nicest and most ethical lawyers in the land. “Who, me? I didn’t tell him what to say,” the lawyer can later comfort himself. “I merely explained the law, see.” It is good practice to scowl and shrug here and add virtuously: “That’s my duty, isn’t it?”
Verily, the question, like expert lecturing, is unchallengeable.
John D. Voelker (writing as Robert Traver), Anatomy of a Murder [Franklin Library 1988] at p. 37-38.
Voelker (June 19, 1903–March 19, 1991) was Marquette County Prosecutor and later a judge of the Michigan Supreme Court. His second novel, Anatomy of a Murder, was based on a real-life murder and became a best seller in 1958. The 1959 movie, directed by Otto Preminger and starring Jimmy Stewart and George C. Scott, is considered one of the best legal movies of all time.
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