Real Lawyer Reacts to HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, Season 1 Episode 1

Y'all have been asking me to react to How to Get Away With Murder for MONTHS, so here ya go!

Transcript

Oh these kids okay. This is unrealistic. Woof.

Hi Friends Welcome happy 2022 I hope you're having a great start to your new year today in honor of the new year we're going to talk about murder. Specifically I'm going to react to How to Get Away with Murder. This is a highly requested reaction video from you and I like to give the people what they want. I've never watched the show. It's been out for years but I just never got into it. I don't know why it seems right up my alley. It's about law and law school and there's sassy female leads, what's not to love? If you're new here, my name is Leeja I'm a real life lawyer on a mission to demystify the law and how it affects your everyday life. That being said, I may be a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer. Nothing that I say should ever be construed as legal advice and you should always seek the advice of a licensed attorney before making any legal decisions. Let's dive right in. I am watching season one, episode one, the pilot I figured let's start from the beginning. If you find this entertaining, please comment down below if you want me to do more of these like maybe I'll just keep watching and react along the way. Who knows but let's just jump into the first episode for old times sake. How about that

No, it's smart Commonwealth v. DeLoach a case where the prosecution should have won but lost because there is no murder weapon.

Nerd. I did some like googling I didn't find any case called Commonwealth V. DeLoach that had anything to do with the lack of a murder weapon, not saying it doesn't exist, but it seems like a real deep cut. I certainly didn't learn it in law school. But it is an interesting concept. The idea that in a criminal trial if you don't have a murder weapon, it is harder to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone did it. Okay. We talked about that in the Casey Anthony trial where the prosecution just didn't have enough evidence to convict Casey Anthony. Similar situation. There was no murder weapon, there was no cause of death able to be determined because the body was so decomposed like she's not wrong. Not having a murder weapon definitely makes the prosecution's job harder.

I puked four times this morning. She's a ballbuster. Sure, but I spent my summer interning for Chief Justice Roberts so. Dershowitz has the upper hand in the academic world but Keating is clearly the better defense attorney.

Dershowitz, I don't think has the upper hand in anything these days. So these are supposed to be 1Ls and that one guy, who by the way, I love that actor in Orange is the New Black. He worked for me, you know what I mean? But he just said that he did a summer internship with Chief Justice Roberts first of all, you don't clerk for a judge in any capacity typically before going to law school. Usually working for a judge happens after you finished law school or at the most a summer internship or a part time internship you do while you're in law school, but you certainly don't do a summer internship for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that summer before you start law school. You would be useless to them. But the fact that he's saying that he clerked for Chief Justice Roberts tells me that this is supposed to be some like ivy league-esque school so I believe this is supposed to be set in Pennsylvania. So I imagine this is supposed to be Penn Penn is one of the Ivy League law schools, but I will say pretty accurate first semester of law school banter, especially the ones who have worked for judges because even if you can't clerk for a judge in a legal capacity, you can like work for a judge as a legal assistant or some other assistant. In my experience, the ones who have worked for judges or in other legal assistant type capacities tend to be the absolute most insufferable once they get to law school because they enter it thinking that they know everything about the law or that they have a leg up amongst their counterparts But time and again these people would raise their hands and prove that they really did not so like the one good thing about law school is like you're really all starting from the same place of just not knowing what the hell you're doing. But there's a lot of ego and there's a lot of big talk, especially at the beginning before your ego has had a chance to get just beaten into submission by your one year.

I will say however, it is true that law school is a lot of pressure and when I tell you that under pressure, I get a little sweaty. Alright, you know what always keeps me feeling fresh. Native deodorants. Thank you so much to Native for partnering with me on today's video. That's right, I started using Native while I was in law school and I still use them today. That genuinely keeps me feeling fresh even when I'm exercising, moving and sweating under pressure. This stuff is not sticky and it dries quickly and it's aluminum free, periban free, vegan, cruelty free like it checks every box my friends and it's made out of familiar products that you already know like coconut oil and shea butter. I recently got my hands on three different scents lavender and Rose, sea salt and cedar, and citrus and herbal musk. And oh my gosh, they all smell great. Today I'm wearing the citrus and herbal musc it smells like like you're freshly showered but still like muskie. Like maybe you've spent a little time in the woods, you know? Oh god, I love it and don't let gender hold you back here. It's musky, but really it's for any gender. Sea salt and cedar is similarly musky, but it smells more like musky at the seashore. Seaside musk and then lavender and rose almost. It has this kind of an antique smell to it like a freshly showered lady in waiting. I don't know if that makes sense. But it's just there's they're they smell genuinely really fresh and it stays put all day and provides 24 hour odor prevention which really anyone can use even if you're not a law student so these scents have been amazing but they have a really wide range of scents that are all like really simple and effective and they have a new scent range, cupcake inspired. A collection with baked by Melissa. They're created to make your every day a little sweeter. So this is the version I got but they also have a plastic free version if you'd like to get a little more sustainable with your packaging. And Native has more to offer than just deodorant. That's right. They also have toothpaste and bodywash Okay, so normally three deodorants would be $39 but if you use the link down below in the description combined with my code LEEJA you'll get three deodorants for $25. That's 33% off and using my code LEEJA you can get 20% off any toothpaste or body wash. So thank you so much to native for partnering with me on today's video helping me stay fresh even when I'm getting a little sweaty under pressure. Let's get back to the video.

Seats are assigned. There's a chart over there. You don't want to be a sitting duck when the shooter gets here. Oh my God. You have no idea what you just walked into.

Oh, these kids okay. In my experience seats were not assigned in law school. This is a really typical setting. I would say when you start law school in a typical situation, your class is made up of you know any number 150 200 students but then you're divided into smaller sections, typically of like 50 to 100 students. I think my section was 80 students, and you take the same exact classes for your entire 1L year with all those same students you're in the same classes with the same people for the full school year which can be a blessing and a curse and allows you to form study groups and close ties with people and find the people that you know you work well with that you can go to time and again to help you study and work through concepts but it also means that it becomes this weird almost high school feeling vibe, because there are cliques that form it's small enough that everyone knows everyone's business people date people break up it's a mess. The drama is real. If you can keep your head above the drama waters good for you. I did not. But usually what happens is you're in this type of kind of lecture hall you come in on your first day you grab a seat, and then the professor hands around a blank seating chart and you put your name in wherever it is you're sitting and then that becomes your seat for the semester, but there is some pressure riding on that because it's like, this is where I'm stuck for the rest of the semester. But I will say they are really effectively capturing the nervous energy of the first day of law school. There's a lot of people talking big game. There's a lot of anxiety about where you're going to sit and who you're going to meet and how it's going to be and how's the professor going to be even though it's a little unrealistic. I think they're getting the general vibe right.

I'm Professor Annalise Keating and this is criminal law 100 Or as I prefer to call it How to Get Away with Murder. Unlike many of my colleagues, I will not be teaching you how to study the law or theorize about it, but rather how to practice it in a court room.

I will say I appreciate that. I had a couple professors who were practicing attorneys on top of being like adjunct professors and I found their teaching to be really refreshing and lovely because they did really just apply it to here's what it looks like to practice law in the real world because a lot of law professors are academics and so they get really heady about theories behind why the law is the way that it is. And that's important. And I really like talking about that sometimes. But it gets to the point where you get so muddied down with theory that you miss the actual concept that you're trying to learn, you know, and you also don't understand how this concept that you're learning applies in the real world. So it can be a double edged sword. So I always appreciated the professors that did try to teach in a way that made the law make sense in the real world setting. My criminal law professor was pretty intense. She did come in kind of guns a blazing because we had to cover a lot of ground in our one semester of criminal law because you're not just studying murder. When you take your first semester of criminal law, your 1L year you do study murder, manslaughter, etc. But you also study a ton of other basic crimes, conspiracy, attempt, robbery, burglary, which are two different things. You also study your Miranda rights or constitutional rights when you get arrested, so your right to an attorney or right to remain silent. When that attaches when it doesn't attach. There's a whole host of stuff that you cover your first criminal law class. So How to Get Away with Murder doesn't entirely encompass what you will actually learn in your first criminal law class your first year of law school.

Tell us the facts. Conor Walsh,

the Commonwealth v/ Gina Sadowski was a case of attempted murder. The defendant Miss Sadowski worked as the second assistant to the victim Arthur Kaufman, the CEO of an advertising agency

So what was Mr. Sadowski's mens rea. Think Mr. Gibbons is nothing more than common sense.

I always hate it when professors said this was just common sense. No it is not you're talking in Latin lady. I know that mens rea is something that a lot of people know and it just means intent. But like it's a little insulting to be like just use your common sense. Ma'am. I've never done this before. This is a Wendy's. This is a somewhat accurate depiction of how a law school class does unfold. This is what's called Socratic teaching or the Socratic method. They will cold call you to answer questions about cases that were assigned to you. So you need to be on top of your ship because they might call you in the middle of class and ask you a question like this. And it is really embarrassing if you don't know. No one, in my experience stood up to answer the questions. That's a little much but it is true that they just look at the seating chart and say you. The way that these students are answering isn't really accurate. I would say there's a lot more trepidation, a lot more uncertainty. It's a lot more guesswork when you are a first year law student because you have no idea what's going on. And a lot of these students are a lot more self assured than I'd say your average first day 1L law students going to be

Never take a learning opportunity away from another student, no matter how smart you need everyone to think you are.

Okay, that's accurate. A lot of people try to make everyone else think that they're really smart, because it's really terrifying to feel like you seem dumb when you're in your law school class. So it's a really natural response, but some people are more insufferable about it than others. But I always really appreciated the professors that would call people out I had some students in my class who would raise their hand and just say words, because they wanted to show everyone that they knew the words but they weren't actually answering any question or asking any substantive question and some professors would really run with it, but others would be like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I don't think that's relevant. Oh, God, that felt good every time that happened. You love to see it.

This isn't a past case. But one I took last week after Gina fired a previous lawyer, and trial begins in two days, so tomorrow, each of you have one minute to present the best defense for this case. See if you can beat my current plan. Use the resources in this office. Gina's discovery file, my library, the people know me even better than myself, my associates.

This is like day two of law school. Also, there's no way in hell that a defense attorney would be allowing this group of like 80 students into her office to discuss an ongoing murder case and give them just unfettered access to discovery documents. I mean, she could have asked permission from her client to do this, but even then it feels like a real attorney client privilege violation on like so many levels, and there's probably a lot of confidential stuff in there that like you don't want just any random person getting their hands on. So there's no way in hell that the theories that a bunch of people on their second day of law school are going to come up with for a murder defense that this woman is going to find helpful or useful in any way. She's got, what 20 years of criminal defense experience like nothing that these kids are going to say is going to help. You don't know what you're doing on your first day of law school. This is unrealistic. I will say I do appreciate that she's giving them this like hands on real world experience. I wish that was a thing in law schools. It's not. You're just not going to be doing this type of work your first semester of law school. It's all books, reading cases, answering questions, taking midterms, taking finals, memorizing legal theories, you're not out in the world doing much. Except drinking.

I normally wouldn't ask to turn it down but today was my first day of law school.

No. The last guy who lived in your apartment was a law student I put up with his crazy lab rabbit sex and his nervous breakdown. You can deal with this.

Not entirely inaccurate. Did I have a nervous breakdown during law school? No. Did I have increasingly numerous panic attacks? Maybe. It's a lot of pressure your first year. I don't know what kind of material that wall is made out of though that it would allow for that type of scratch mark to be made. Is it made of clay, is that a clay wall? Do you have clay walls in Philadelphia? Where's Gina? Well, Mr. Carpenter represents the wealthy and types of..murder therefore is a bogus inaccurate charge. We don't know where Gina was. I think not. I think not. Indeed.

That's pretty accurate when you're doing your first like practice oral arguments your first year of law school. I bombed mine you guys I'm not gonna lie. Talk about sweating under pressure. Am I right? Oh, boy, I did bad. But listen, we bounce back. There are supreme court justices that have gotten C's and B's during their law school experience. It's fine.

None of you beat my approach, which goes as follows. Step one, discredit the witnesses. Step two, introduce a new suspect. That person is Mr. Kaufman's jealous business partner Lionel Bryant. Step three we bury the evidence. We throw so much information at the jury that they walk into the deliberation room with one overwhelming feeling doubt. That's how you get away with murder.

I mean, this isn't like a groundbreaking defense strategy. It's not a bad defense strategy. And of course, I'm not an expert at this. But you know, you see that quite a bit. Your main goal is always going to be to discredit whatever witnesses the prosecution brings forward. You want to make sure that their credibility is thrown out as much as possible or question their motives or anything like that. That's going to put some doubt in the minds of jurors introducing an alternative theory to the case. Also pretty common. And that is also a strategy that is employed by defense attorneys to then throw enough evidence at the jurors that something in them has some doubt. See, for example, the Casey Anthony case that I covered a couple weeks ago. So it's not a bad theory. I don't I just don't think it's necessarily like groundbreaking, you know what I mean? But again, none of these 1Ls would have thought of that. Because you don't know anything your first day of law school.

See you in the courthouse at nine.

Professor Keating we have torts at nine tomorrow then property and 11. So

Your whining right now makes me believe you think I'm your mother, Miss Pratt show up tomorrow or drop out of the competition. It's that simple.

It is cool, though, that they're going into court and observing court. I think that's a really powerful thing that as a law student you can do. My civil procedure professor had us observe some court and it was really helpful. And a lot of my favorite moments from my internships as a law student were when I was just observing in court. I spent a lot of time in court just watching people practice law, and it's really cool to do and what's fun is you can do it, wherever you are, even if you're not a law student. Most things are open to the public. You just have to search courts in your state or federal courts in your state. And usually the website has a schedule, and you can just show up at the courthouse. And it's really cool to watch it unfold. If you have a free day some week and you want to just show up at the courthouse, check the online schedule first and find something that's going on that might seem interesting. And it's important that we have open courts in this country. That's the whole reason behind that is because we want the public to have access to the judicial process and to be able to hold judges and the judicial process accountable. It's really hard though because we don't really have great legal education for non law students in this country. So people don't even know that they can just show up at the courthouse and watch things unfold so that people don't know that because our legal literacy in this country is lacking, which is the whole reason why I made this YouTube channel to begin with. So let me get off my soapbox, but go check out your local courthouse, see what's going on and learn something.

Can I have a moment your honor? What are you doing?

Are you colorblind?

Yes, but I know what I saw.

I see so whether the pill that you saw my clients desk was blue, like her anxiety medication she used to endure working under you, or yellow like the aspirin used to poison Mr. Kaufman is not something you can tell.

Okay, well, that was great for her because she was able to question the credibility of this witness, therefore undermining the entire story that the prosecution's putting forward however, first of all, if someone enters a courtroom during a trial like this, things don't stop. You're ignored. It's kind of rude to do so but like you can do it. The person who's in the process of questioning a witness isn't going to stop and turn around and be like what's going on? Also, a reminder these people are like one week into their first semester of law school. There is no way in hell she would know anything or be able to just traipse into the middle of a trial in the middle of questioning a witness and like change the whole trajectory of cross exam. You know what I mean? That does make me think of the scene in my cousin Vinny, which I reacted to I'll link it in the card up above, where he tests the older woman's sight by standing way back in the courtroom and putting up fingers and asking how many he had up. It's a great way to discredit a witness who has some sort of eyewitness testimony to give to undermine their ability to actually sense their surroundings

Oh my god. Hello?

Has this guy never heard of sending an email? Let her have a life. Alright. Professors have lives too.

I came across this case Commonwealth v McGinnis, which says we can move for faster verdict if we think the prosecution's evidence is insufficient, suggesting

That's called a directed verdict tand if we asked for it and get denied, all the public will hear is there's enough evidence to convict. But you discredited the first assistant today. You had an idea, I'm telling you it's a bad one. Good night Seth.

She's not wrong. Of course she knows what a directed verdict is. It's a real thing. And it's a real basic thing you learn in your first semester of civil procedure. Again, he could have sent an email. A directed verdict is something that a party can move for asking the judge to just make a determination without sending the case to a jury. Basically, the judge would have to determine that there is simply no evidence that a jury could possibly decide in one party's favor. This is a really difficult thing to reach because usually a judge is going to want to send it to a Fact Finder the jury to make a determination it's very rare that a judge is gonna be able to flat out say like there is simply no evidence that could possibly support the prosecution's case here. So she's right. It's a bad idea.

Please read this email that you wrote to Mr. Kaufman,

Dear Arthur, consider this my official request that you step down as CEO. I've warned you about having sexual relations with employees.

This email was not part of the discovery file.

I thought it was.

Did you write this email, Mr. Prime? Yes. Then I have to side with the defense here. The emails admissible. Your Honor. I've made my decision, Mr. Williams.

Okay. At the very least you would have to give the prosecution a copy of this email. She can't just be like not going to tell the prosecution like you can't just surprise just drop a bunch of evidence without giving the prosecution a copy of it. However, usually, in order to enter an email into evidence, you do have to have the person who wrote the email present to authenticate it and she did have that here. So that's good, but that was a valid objection that the prosecutor made

First year is the hardest year. But just put your head down, do the work and try not to take it so seriously, okay. No offense, man, but obviously you never went to law school. This place is a dogfight 24/7.

It's true. First year is the worst and in some cases it can be a dogfight, it depends on which school you go to. My school was really collegial. I went to Northeastern in Boston and everyone was pretty in it to help everyone out and make friends and be collegial but I have heard horror stories of other law schools. I could see an Ivy League school being like this. Stories of you walk away from your laptop in the library to go to the bathroom and come back and someone smashed it to sabotage you or shared books for classes that are in the library, someone will check it out, rip out important pages so that other people can't get to them. So I think in some cases, it can be pretty bad. My experience, luckily, it was the opposite because the thing is you go to law school with other law students who are going to be lawyers, and the legal profession, it's big, there's a lot of lawyers, but it's small enough that having a bad reputation is going to bite you in the butt at some point.

Because then you'd actually be admitting out loud to defending a guilty client. Who really has the time to deal with the moral repercussions of that.

As a defense attorney you sometimes do defend guilty clients, everyone who's been charged with a crime whether or not they are guilty of it deserves competent representation. And in some cases, if the client is guilty, or they've pled guilty, you still have to be there to defend them because their constitutional rights still come into play. You can push back on their sentencing, on the evidence used against them, etc, etc. There is a lot of work for a defense attorney to do even in the case where there is a guilty client. And if your client has pled not guilty, it is your job to defend that pleading. People do it all the time.

We've been talking about having a baby for a long time. Making excuses but it's put a lot of pressure on us and on our marriage. Thank you for keeping this between us.

I can't tell if I can trust her. This seems like a manipulation move. Also, isn't she like in her 40s? Hasn't ship sailed you know I mean?

Footage that I will now play for everyone. There the night before the murder attempt...

Your one job to let us know what bodies we need to bury text calls anything we needed to destroy it and you didn't. So guess what? Guess what? You'll go to jail. And I'm the shoddy lawyer who put you there. I had a headache. Stop lying.

They would have had that evidence before trial. Like it's not something that's just going to be sprung on them. The prosecution had to have given them that as part of their discovery files before presenting it to a jury. Also reminder that's her client. You can't speak like that to a client. She's paying her a lot of money for this defense.

Everything after this moment will not only determine your career but your life. You can spend it in a corporate office drafting contracts and hitting on chubby paralegals before finally putting a gun in your mouth. Or you can join my firm and become someone you actually like.

WOOF. I don't know if deciding between doing corporate law or doing criminal defense is really what's going to determine whether or not you become someone you like. I think you can be self loathing equally in either situation. Also, people love to harp on that, like the decisions that you make the grades that you make your first year of law school determine the rest of your life. It's a crock of ship. Of course, grades matter but like you'll still get a job you'll be fine. It's not that deep. You know what I mean?

It's the only way to destroy the DNA.

Whoa, what a zinger of an ending. Hmm, I will say that's not the only way to destroy DNA evidence. It's been difficult to get DNA evidence off decomposed remains out in the wilderness, remains that have been dumped in a lake or river which they were right by, remains that were put in a plastic bag and allowed to decompose, you know, like burning is not the only way okay, but what a way to do it. Dang. Well, that was fun, if a little inaccurate, a little dramatized. But like that's the whole point. Right? We're here for some entertainment not to get the actual reality of what it's like to be a law student because frankly, it's way more boring than that. But I think they did a good job of capturing the general nervous energy of your 1L year well, that was fun. I hope that you enjoyed this if you did, please consider hitting that thumbs up button down below and hitting the subscribe button if you want to hear more from me. If there are other TV shows, movies or episodes of this show that you'd like me to react to comment those down below as well. Once again, thank you to Native for partnering with me on today's video, reminder to check out the link in the description down below and use my code LEEJA to get three deodorants for $25. You can also use that code LEEJA to get 20% off any toothpaste or bodywash. Keep it fresh, my friends. I owe a few belated thank yous to a few Patreon supporters. That's right I have a patreon if you didn't know. If you want to support me, get some behind the scenes footage, early access to videos and other little goodies please consider joining the community over on Patreon. We also have a fun discord chat. We have a good time over there. So thank you so much to old man pence, Ashley Morris, Stacy Kleinendorst and Erameys, my newest Patreons, and thank you as always to Bret Piontek my VIP extra special Patreon supporter for your ongoing support. It means the world to me. Also a reminder that I am offering content creator sessions. That's right. If you're interested in becoming a content creator, consider signing up for a session with me today. We'll have a one on one discussion to talk about your dreams and hopes and how to get you there. Alright, more information is at the link in the description down below. Thank you so much for watching. Have a great day. Goodbye!

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