Lawyers are cool! Seriously, they write books, fashion guitars out of chocolate and even marry Michelle Pfeiffer. Here are six (mostly) lawyer-made things you should check out now
READS
Typography for Lawyers
Appalled by the terrible typography being employed by his cohorts, California lawyer Matthew Butterick set out to create the definitive guide to text and type for the legal industry, and that he did. Typography for Lawyers provides cheeky instruction, and ridicule, for the excessive underliners and Comic Sans fans among us. His advice for the latter? “Save it for your next career as a designer of breakfast-cereal boxes.”
Picture It Picture Books
Co-written by Toronto lawyer Leanne Milech, this series of children’s books allows kids’ imaginations to take over and draw the accompanying pictures themselves. It also gives parents rare insight — one blossoming artist, illustrating the My Alphabet book, decided that “N is for nuclier bomb.”
TV
Harry’s Law
NBC’s latest legal venture features Kathy Bates as Harry Korn, a star patent lawyer who, after a nervous breakdown, opens up a law practice in an abandoned Cincinnati shoe store defending the ’hood’s criminals, mostly minorities who “fell through the cracks.” Creator David E. Kelley has made some great TV shows — Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal — but this ain’t one of ’em. Rather, the quirky show is a thinly veiled platform for Kelley’s lefty politics, but without the emotional payoff that made his earlier work so enjoyable.
The Defenders
For a less soapboxy new legal show, check out The Defenders, a CBS comedy-drama about two high-profile defence attorneys (Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell) in Las Vegas. With O’Connell as the show’s resident playboy and Belushi as a dedicated lawyer who frequently pulls ridiculously bold stunts to help his clients, this show lacks the gritty one-liners of most procedural crime franchises, but makes up for it in laughs. It also sets itself apart from the rest by giving its leads something unique in the genre: personalities.
EATS
The Blake House
Toast Edward Blake, Ontario’s second premier and founder of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, over a pint of Muskoka Cream Ale in Blake’s 1891 mansion — now a cozy pub, serving up Canadian comfort food, at Jarvis and Wellesley in Toronto.
The Chocolateria
Former corporate lawyer Tim English turned his love of sweets into a new career by opening a chocolate shop in Toronto’s Roncesvalles neighbourhood. Why chocolate? “It’s hot right now and it’s kind of recession proof,” English says. “If you like chocolate, you’re going to find a way to buy it, whether you have a job or not.” Don’t leave without his specialty: a chocolate-dipped potato chip.
Photos courtesy of CBS Broadcasting Inc. & Matthias Clamer/NBC