What would Atticus do? UB Law community reflects on great fictional lawyer

With the news that author Harper Lee will publish a sequel to her beloved novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” this summer, public attention again has focused on a great fictional lawyer — the book’s hero, Atticus Finch.

But for some members of the UB Law School community, Finch has always been a moral touchstone. In both the original 1960 novel and the 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck, Atticus Finch represents the best of the profession and the best of humanity.

Law librarian Christine George, for one, says Finch’s inspiration has never left her since she first read “Mockingbird” in high school. “What most people know of lawyers is just what you see on television, arguing in the courtroom,” George says. “But once you’re in law school, you can appreciate the fact that Atticus is not just in the courtroom. He’s a part of the community, he loves the community and they rely on him. It’s a reminder that you are a lawyer 24/7.”

For three years now, George has organized an in-house competition around Academy Awards time — “the Millies,” named after the first director of the Law Library — and solicited votes in such categories as Best Courtroom Scene and Best Negotiation/Mediation. Campaigning on social media is fierce, and each year so far Atticus Finch has taken the Millie for Favorite Lawyer. “The pillar of Maycomb County has shown the best of what lawyers can be,” said George’s blog post announcing the victory.

Third-year student Max Cohen says Finch’s words from the book have sustained him through law school. “Whenever I had times of doubt or struggle, I would think about what Atticus Finch would do,” Cohen says. “Atticus was a man who did what was right, regardless of the circumstances, while doing his best to teach his children the same lessons so that they, in turn, could use them in the future. 

“I reread the book this past year in my free time, and I jotted this Atticus quote down: ‘I wanted you to see what real courage is instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.’

“The quote gives me all the strength in the world,” Cohen says, “to do what I think is right and stick with my decision. Oftentimes in law school it can be easy to be discouraged, but the important part is sticking with your convictions and seeing them through. You only have your own actions to live with.” 

First-year student Joseph Lavoie is a founder of the newly formed Holistic Law Students group, which he says seeks to help students “develop the capacity to practice law sustainably with integrity. We want to create a space where students and practitioners can come together and discuss what it looks like to practice law without burning out or becoming so detached from your clients that they become numbers and you’re just going in for a paycheck.”

In that vein, Lavoie says that for him, Finch models the kind of commitment that he saw among the Legal Aid lawyers with whom he worked in Rochester on behalf of women who were targets of domestic violence: “They are the embodiment of integrity and moral ambition — people coming in every day and giving their best effort.

“Atticus Finch to me represents what it means to be morally ambitious,” Lavoie says. “He is someone who follows his own sense of morality as a driving force. Each person might have their own sense of what it is to be moral, but holding that as the primary focus of one’s life — cultivating a greater sense of morality — is what’s important.”

Those qualities were much in evidence this past semester as a packed lecture hall heard David Link, emeritus dean of the University of Notre Dame Law School, discuss Finch’s moral heroism, compassion and integrity. The event was co-hosted by the Law School, the Notre Dame Attorney Alumni Group and the Notre Dame Club of Buffalo.

Link showed clips from “To Kill a Mockingbird” and said he routinely assigned students in his ethics classes to watch the movie, which he himself has seen more than 50 times.

“Virtually everyone agrees that Atticus was a great lawyer,” Link said. “The question is, why?”

Among the reasons, he said, was that Finch agreed without hesitation to take on the case of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, “even though he knew that defending a Negro against a white family’s accusation, in that community, was very likely to ruin his law practice and likely get him run out of town.” Atticus himself says that if he refused the case, “I couldn’t hold my head up in town. … I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”

Among the movie clips Link showed was one in which Finch stations himself, rifle in hand, in front of the town jail and defends his client against a lynch mob. That, Link said, shows compassion in action. “Atticus has the formula for happiness,” he said. “He’s happy taking on other people’s problems. He’s happy with his personal life purpose. He’s happy walking around in the skin that was assigned to him.”

That attitude, said Link, who was trained as a litigator, has served him well. “I came out of law school as a lawyer,” he said. “I very quickly became an attorney. A lawyer is someone who uses the law, but an attorney is someone who stands in the shoes of his or her client, who says, ‘You’ve got a problem? Not anymore you don’t, because I’ve got a problem. I’m going to stand in your shoes. I’m going to help you find a healing.’

“What our clients need is a healing.”