Army of Lawyers

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SUE two three four, SUE two three four!

Exactly What It Says on the Tin. These are Mooks in suits, used for intimidation. When a character in a story feels he's been wronged (or feels he can get the upper hand), especially if said character is rich, he'll often threaten to call upon his Army of Lawyers. (Sometimes, "my legal team", same diff. In other words, lawyer overkill.) Sometimes that Army can actually be seen in a show, and when they are, they are invariably marching in ranks behind the character, in step and double-file (and often with an added foley effect of marching jackboots). Occasionally it will be a team of Yes Men or Middle Management Mooks rather than lawyers, but with the same effect: a martial show of force in a corporate or legal setting. Sometimes the Army will be acting on behalf of an unseen (usually evil) client, all members of the Army working toward one ominous goal.

Compare Evil Lawyer Joke, You Wanna Get Sued?.

Examples of Army of Lawyers include:

Film

• In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Clark's boss is introduced with a team of yes-men marching lockstep behind him (with foley marching sound effects).
• In John Grisham's The Rainmaker, Naive Newcomer attorney Rudy Baylor has an Oh Crap moment when he meets the opposing legal team.

Rudy: I do believe that centuries of cumulative legal experience are seated at this table, all in opposition to me.

• • A subtle yet deadly approach to this trope, as he's talking about eight Evil Old Folks - as in eight senior citizens who have been getting Mega Corps Off on a Technicality since they were his age.

Literature

• Both the plaintiff and the big tobacco company have one of these in John Grisham's The Runaway Jury.
• Discworld:
  • There's an Army of Lawyers surrounding the Lavish family in Making Money, although they're mostly there to threaten other Lavishes.
  • The Elf Queen summons an Army of Lawyers in The Wee Free Men; the one thing the Nac Mac Feegle are scared of.
• It's mentioned many times in The Dresden Files that Gentleman Johny Marcone has an Army of Lawyers to protect him from any kind of legal charges.
• The Supernaturalist features combat lawyers known as Paralegals, causing a character to remark "I liked it better when they fought with briefcases".

Live-Action TV

• The law firm of Wolfram & Hart from Angel.
• One episode of The Defenders (the 2010 series with lawyers, not that comic book series) has one episode's bad guys use their Army of Lawyers as a blatant show of force. There are so many of them that when they sit down at their ridiculously long table they need two row of chairs.

Newspaper Comics

• Parodied in one Far Side comic, where an explorer at the edge of an island jungle is confronted with a group of men in suits with briefcases.

caption: Wellington held out some beads and other trinkets, but the islanders had sent their fiercest lawyers- some of whom were chanting, "Sue him! Sue him!"

• There's a KAL cartoon about the contested 2000 Bush-Gore election in Florida. It's in the general format of "12 Days of Christmas" and number six is "six legions of lawyers".

Video Games

• In Call To Power and its sequel, once you develop to the Modern Era, you can train Lawyers and Corporate Branches to wage economic warfare on your enemies. Ordinary army-units are mostly helpless against them, too - only Lawyers can fight Lawyers. And they're really, really effective. This means that unless it ends before you develop that far, a multiplayer match will inevitably devolve into an earth-shattering confrontation between two competing armies of briefcase-wielding, suit-wearing lawyers (and corporate branches).
• Frontier: First Encounters has a mission dealing with these:

M.C.S: The W'rits maintained that Rockforth, in the shape of Thompson Thompsonson, CEO of Yorksville Hospitality Inc. and manager of the Pink Flamingo, had 'persuaded' Dien W'rit to write an entirely new Will (in the company of two Rockforth Lawyers) M.C.S: and then, effectively, fed him to the alligators. The interesting aspect of all this, from a legal point of view is that the libel action has been heard independently of the murder trial and has been decided before it. M.C.S: In the judges' opinion, Thompsonson is innocent until proven guilty and therefore any assertions made before the trial constitute libel. The W'rits are, not surprisingly, contesting the decision with the full support of the legal establishment M.C.S: who point out that if this sets a precedent, it will be impossible to try anybody under Independent Systems Law because the mere act of bringing a case to court will, in and of itself, constitute an act of libel. message board: "RENOVATION REQUIRED" employer: The renovation committee of the Friends of Dien W'rit require structural alterations to the Rockforth Legal Academy. Highest prices paid. PC: What needs to be done? employer: The academy requires to be razed to the ground. We think that a number of missiles fired from a fast-moving warship might do the trick.

Web Comics

• The Partnership Collective in Schlock Mercenary.
• Thief's Ninja Lawyers in 8-Bit Theater.
• Torg and Riff of Sluggy Freelance are confronted with a "Gaggle of Slavering Lawyers" when trying to rent a house. Disturbingly, it is revealed that the horde is not actually an army per se, but one entity with bird legs and numerous suited lawyer torsos and heads.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons
  • C. Montgomery Burns has a team of lawyers but usually only the Blue Haired Lawyer talks.
  • The episode "The Joy of the Sect" had the Movementarians call out their lawyers (in the style of some firemen) when they've realised that Marge managed to break her family out.

Real Life

• IBM's lawyers have been compared to the Nazgûl (of LoTR fame).
• A radio commercial aired prior to the 2010 November elections in California warned voters that Proposition 25 was being fought by politicians and their "briefcase army" (with appropriate marching sound effects in the background).
• J. K. Rowling is said to have an Army of Lawyers in this Times Online article.
• On the website Classic Adventure Gaming, the writer asks that an unidentified man not sue him with his Army of Lawyers
• "Prince sends Army of Lawyers to take on Pirate Bay"
• "Bowen: Army of Lawyers at the ready if Prop 14 passes"
• Humorous example: A famous entry in the Doo Dah parade in Pasadena, California was the Synchronized Briefcase Drill Team, with 16 men and women in three-piece suits performing precision marching routines with attaché cases.
• Actual lawyers find this phenomenon very amusing, especially when you can be relatively sure that three of the six lawyers on one side of the bar are totally superfluous. They're only there to impress their own clients (and soak some more cash) and intimidate the other side's clients.