Just want to toss in that I’ve known a slew of lawyers in many areas of practice over my 30 yr (so far) legal career. I often hear people refer to lawyers who are :in love with the law" and very highly committed to their role as “officer of the court.”
I’m certainly not saying all - or even a large percentage of - lawyers are unethical. But at heart, the practice of law is a job, like so many others. A lot of it is HUGELY boring. (Props to BCS for actually portraying document review!) How you perceive and respond to so many things is colored by who your client is. Most often, the ultimate determinant is to decline to represent an iffy client, or to take on an iffy claim.
Also, law can really messy in terms of the facts, the personalities, and the governing law. Little law is as clear as you might expect. One of the main things lawyers do is present plausible interpretations of law and facts. In light of this, you just encounter so much crap that has a bit of a smell to it - but if it isn’t all that horrible, and if it doesn’t directly affect you or your client, quite often lawyers will find a way to turn a blind eye. If anything, they will form an opinion as to the wrongdoing lawyer’s ethics, and choose to disassociate from them, or be wary of them, in the future.
Not intended as a treatise or anything. Just want to point out that if that super-ethical officer-of-the-court in-love-with-the-law exists, I haven’t encountered him/her (yet).
I’m going to be a bit contrarian again in this thread, and say I don’t agree with the analyses of the tape given in the last few posts.
Very clearly the tape, and the fact that it was duplicated, has something to do with J&K’s strategy. But just saying that making a copy shows Chuck had it in for his brother, and then using it as a jump-off point for talking about his overall state of mind…I don’t buy it.
J&K are acting like they have a cunning plan, and the above, in isolation, seems desperate to me. Plus I don’t think it’s enough for Jimmy to bring Chuck down with him, he actually needs to stop the disbar (if that’s the noun).
I think the show will have something more specific than the theories given so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.
I think Chuck will end up living in a nursing home with Hector as his roommate. He’ll find out he is allergic to the frequency of Hector’s bell. Unable to cope, he becomes addicted to blue meth and ends up in the crack den where Jesse goes and in a love triangle with Skank woman.
Ernesto, broke from being fired, has to turn to his dad Gustavo for money. Gustavo is more than happy to help him, but first Ernesto has to do one thing for him: eat the Chilean fish stew that’s been in the refrigerator ever since the night of their argument over him refusing to try it.
You missed a key part of the theories (that I think you’re referring to) are that Jimmy says his confession to altering documents was given under the duress of placating his clearly disturbed brother. It was a family problem, not a professional problem, so no disbarment.
Kim might play up the deception angle - Jimmy confessed because he thought Chuck was severely agitated, but the existence of the tape demonstrates the Chuck had some presence of mind to use an electronic recording device despite his claimed “allergy”, hence Chuck is deceptive.
If the review board is as biased toward Chuck as we’ve been told, destroying Chuck would likely be the only way to win for Jimmy.
So unless I completely misinterpreted or misremembered a large part of the most recent episode, Jimmy and Kim didn’t want the tape mentioned, that’s why they want to refer to it as “property” rather than a cassette tape.
Chuck and Howard (mainly Chuck) want/ need the tape to be mentioned, which is why they were reluctant to allow it. In the end they do allow it but then when the price of the damaged property is mentioned Chuck corrects the Judge, adding an extra $2.80 (or something close to that) so on the total cost of damages it will list two separate items:
Damaged Property - $355
Cassette Tape - $2.80
Assumingly, this is part of Chuck’s plan(I don’t quite see how yet) to be able to play the tape for everyone to hear in court, ruining Jimmy’s reputation while restoring his own.
But everyone who’s listened to the tape has agreed that that is the obvious defence for Jimmy to claim (excluding Ernesto, who isn’t a lawyer and didn’t hear the whole thing anyway).
If this is J&K’s cunning plan, they’re banking a lot on Chuck being unusually unprepared.
It’s not just that. It’s that paired with Chuck’s known dislike of Jimmy being a lawyer and previous attempts at sabotage of Jimmy’s career. With a helping of his meticulous planning and and mental problems.
Yes, you misinterpreted the episode. Jimmy and Kim most certainly want the tape mentioned, their playing with the phrasing was intended to make Chuck think that they were trying to hide it, and that he’s outmaneuvering them. If they actually didn’t want the tape mentioned, Kim wouldn’t have said ‘Bingo’ to Jimmy after making sure that Chuck planned to introduce the tape into evidence. Chuck introducing the tape over Jimmy’s objection will support Jimmy’s claim that he’s trying to protect his brother from having everyone know he’s crazy. Jimmy will be ‘forced’ to ‘reluctantly’ call out and demonstrate his brother’s illness, and will claim that he never altered documents, that he lied on the tape to try to snap his brother back into a functional state.
Chuck’s plan is fairly simple. He couldn’t play the tape in court because it hasn’t been handled properly as evidence, the veracity of it could be challenged, and it was done under duress. Howard, Kim, a law professor, and Chuck all agree that this is the case, it’s unlikely to even be allowed in court, and definitely isn’t enough to sustain a conviction. However, by letting Jimmy know about the tape, Chuck knew that Jimmy would try to do something illegal about the tape, and hired PIs to make sure Jimmy got caught. Once Jimmy was caught and charged, Chuck pushed for the prosecutor to make the plea deal because it will require a bar hearing. At the hearing, he’s going to introduce the tape ostensibly to demonstrate why Jimmy would want to break into his brother’s house, but actually so that the people at the hearing will hear Jimmy confess to altering legal documents, which will result in Jimmy being disbarred for what’s on the tape.
Also, Chuck’s plan has nothing to do with restoring his reputation. He’s written off Mesa Verde, and the single mistake that only a few people know about just isn’t a big deal. His says/thinks his plan is about keeping Jimmy the ‘Monkey with a Machine Gun’ from practicing law, but it’s pretty clear that it’s really about keeping Jimmy in his place and taking revenge.
Chuck had to take extreme measures to create the first tape because of his “illness.” He had to bury the recorder under sheets of foil, then needed to use tools to retrieve the tape…
…so how did he make copies?
I’m starting to think Jimmy & Kim are going to expose Chuck’s illness as a scam, and take away all his credibility. I do recall a scene in the first season with Chuck in the hospital, explaining to the doctor what his illness was, and they told him they shut off one of the machines (but secretly kept it on) and Chuck said he felt better…even though the machine was still on.
Chuck’s illness isn’t a scam, but it is psychological, not physiological. That’s why he thought he felt better when he believed the machine was turned off. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t rather be healthy and still able to practice law (properly, not just consulting from home). That his brother can practice law is part of the reason Chuck resents him.
I think Jimmy and Kim were shown to be playing possum (or “Bre’r Rabbit”). They want Chuck and Howard to *think *they don’t want the tape to be entered into evidence, when in fact that’s exactly what they *do *want. Reverse psychology, a trap.
He would just get Hamlin or whoever replaces Ernesto or one of his PIs to do it. He had to take extreme measures to tape initially because he didn’t want to bring anyone else in on it, but after he fooled Jimmy into confessing he could let someone else deal with making a copy. HHM probably has some a contract with a company for duplicating and storing tapes, since the non-Chuck people probably record important things occasionally.
It’s not a scam, it’s just that it’s a psychological condition and not a physical one. Chuck isn’t faking, but he’s also not responding to physical phenomena directly.
That could be but why couldn’t they just search for her on Google or get a connection to use a government database? They don’t need the address book to find her and the entry would probably be way out of date anyway. It’s probably has to do with the fact that someone is in his address book in the first place.