In two of their most recent issues, New York magazine had articles listing (their idea of) the “Best Doctors in New York”, and the “Best Lawyers in New York”. In the “Best Doctors” issue, there were photographs accompanying the article which showed doctors engaged in performing their medical specialties, with one guy engaged in delivering a baby through a gory C-Section procedure, another guy cutting into some unlucky fellow’s cranium to remove a brain tumor, etc. But in the “Best Lawyers” issue (I’m referring specifically to the one about the “Top Verdicts & Settlements & Personal Injury Litigators 2011”. I suppose there are so many lawyers in New York, it takes them several issues to get through them all, whereas the doctors only takes one issue. Or maybe it’s just that people are interested enough in and like doctors sufficiently to buy and read a magazine dedicated to them, whereas nobody would deign to take even a cursory glance at a magazine dedicated to lawyers. But who knows.), the pictures illustrating the article/list of the “best” lawyers simply show the lawyers standing there in their business suits and smiling in front of books, framed diplomas, the New York Courthouse, etc. But they’re all just posing for photographs! Why aren’t they shown plying their trade, like the doctors were?
Don’t you think we should get to see these supposedly great lawyers performing their magic? How do we know they’re any good otherwise? Just because some penny-ante magazine says so? Puh-leeze! We need to see it! And the article would be way more fascinating to look at, too! They could show a personal injury attorney chasing after an ambulance on foot in his primo hand-tailored suit and Italian shoes, or handing a business card to someone who just slipped on a sidewalk or got run over by a cab. Or they could show a civil trial lawyer holding up a prejudicial photograph while making sad puppy-dog eyes at a crying jury. They could even show a series of photographs of the best divorce lawyer in the city: first in the courtroom, pointing accusingly at a frowning man in a suit while a trophy wife sits looking smugly satisfied across the aisle from him; then dropping a huge pile of cash in front of the gleefully smiling woman while the man holds his head in his hands in the same courtroom; and after that, handing over they keys to the house and car, while they stand in front of a Porsche and a big Westchester home, with the ex-husband having a tantrum pounding the ground with his fists and crying behind them.
See? That would show what good lawyers they really are, and we’d all get to look at entertaining pictures to make the story more interesting. And then, obviously, we’d all sprint out of our apartments to go get injured or divorced, or to sue some corporation for malfeasance. Or, at least, I would.
