This is, of course, a line from The Godfather. My question is about the scene in which Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and James Caan are all sitting in a room debating whether to get into the narcotics business (well, not really debating no one debates with the godfather himself, but rather James and Robert gave him their takes on it)
So to the question. Robert Duvall’s character, Tom, is the family’s lawyer. He sits there and openly discusses, and verbally supports I might add, that the organization target the narcotics ‘industry’. As a lawyer shouldn’t he have left the room at least when they were discussing that?
To my knowledge real lawyers would be disbarred if they did this and were found out (which I sppose is the rub).
Oh come on! Tom was the consigliere (sp?). He wasn’t just the family lawyer. As he told Leo Woltz, “I have a special practice. I only handle one client.” Tom was a lawyer because the family needed someone with those credentials for certain legal processes, but he was a lawyer second. He was a family man first.
Hagen(sp?) was “adopted” by Vito Corleone years earlier (according to Michael) and served the Corleone family exclusively.
Don’t know if this helps, but I remember an episode of Law and Order where an attorney was helping out some criminal types by actually giving advice on how to commit and cover up crimes and it turned out that their conversation had been recorded during a police wiretap. This attorney later tried to get the wiretap evidence excluded by claiming that any discussions he had with his client fell under the attorney-client priviledge rule and could not be admitted. The judge ruled that when the attorney went beyond giving legal advice and actually began breaking the law, that he was no longer acting as an attorney.
As a fascinating real-life side-bar to this O.P., the American Bar Association has proposed a rather radical reform. Actually, many of them. One would now permit lawyers to report, and testify against, clients if the act of reporting and/or testifying would stop a murder or fraud. This Site will provide links to the detailed proposed changes.
Dicey, ain’t it? In other related news this week, a judge ruled that A.A. meetings are as sacrosanct as a confessional closet with a priest, and admissions of crimes spoken during an A.A. meeting cannot be used as evidence. This A.B.C. News report covers it nicely.
IIRC from the book, Tom Hagen was a street kid who Sonny Corleone (as a boy himself) met and befriended and then took home, and the Corleones took him in and raised him as their son.
I don’t get the impression that Tom is the most ethical lawyer out there, though…
Jeez, he was tacitly involved in the murder of one Salvatore Tessio…
*Tessio: “Tom, can you get me off the hook? For old time’s sake?”
Hagen: “Sorry, Sally…”*
Chilling. Poor Tessio…
I always wondered how involved he was in the Horse Head incident, being the man on site, as it were. (And I also always wondered about the logistics of that. How many people needed to get paid off and/or eliminated to pull that off?)
Yeah, but Tessio went like a man to his fate. Possibly the end wasn’t as calm as what we saw but he didn’t go kicking and screaming like Carlo did. Sheesh, could Clamenza have been a little less discreet? No matter, I’m sure the Corleone’s neighbors didn’t see a damn thing.
Keep in mind that the criminal conspiracy went far beyond the family as Vito owned many judges and cops. Tom would have been virtually untouchable by the law. It is a little inconsistent though when Micheal excludes Tom because he’s “not a wartime consiglieri.”
I’ve wondered about the horse head too. The logistics are mind boggling but I just chalk it up to a little suspension of disbelief in favor keeping the story going. Luca Brasi must have been a lot smarter than he looked.
But don’t I remember other situations in which the Godfather tried to distance Duvall’s character from the criminal activity, ostensibly because he might have to represent them in court?
Also, is it plausible that an Irish kid from a working class neighborhood with an interest in the law could be accepted in the Italian mafia? Where do I sign up?
