G.O.A.T. Movie Lawyers

Every lawyer has their favorite courtroom movie. Here's my definitive ranking of the greatest movie lawyers of all time.

1. Joe Miller (Philadelphia)

Denzel Washington plays a personal injury lawyer who takes on a wrongful termination case that no one else would touch. What makes him the GOAT isn't the big speech—it's the transformation. He starts the movie with his own prejudices and ends it having done genuinely heroic work.

2. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)

The obvious choice, and for good reason. Gregory Peck's Atticus defined what a lot of us thought a lawyer should be before we actually became lawyers. Principled. Brave. Wearing a white suit in Alabama heat.

3. Vinny Gambini (My Cousin Vinny)

Don't laugh. Joe Pesci's Vinny is a better lawyer than half the people I went to law school with. He's unprepared, sure. He doesn't know the rules. But he knows how to cross-examine a witness, and that scene with the grits? That's how you impeach testimony.

4. Elle Woods (Legally Blonde)

I'm serious. She gets into Harvard Law to follow a boy, but she stays because she's actually good at it. The bendand-snap aside, her cross-examination in the murder trial is legitimately clever.

5. Frank Galvin (The Verdict)

Paul Newman as a washed-up ambulance chaser who finds one last shot at redemption. The opposite of a feel-good movie, but the courtroom scenes are some of the best ever filmed.

Honorable mention: Daniel Kaffee (A Few Good Men), but only for the last 20 minutes.

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