There is "…Corrosion, especially during the last two decades, of the ideal of the lawyer-statesman, an ideal that joins the narrowly prudential character of private counsel with the broader virtues of public services" (Klinkenborg, 32). The operative philosophy that "…money will always be a vastly more far-reaching form of power than the command of ideas" explains the "enormous growth" of the number of lawyers in America in recent years, Klinkenborg asserts. The reader is "…invited, encouraged, to share McDeere's salacious glee as the perquisites of his new profession are heaped upon him," Klinkenborg writes (36).

McDeere receives "…an eel-skin attache, a BMW [in the film it's a Mercedes], a new wardrobe, a low-interest mortgage, [and] the annulment of student loans," Klinkenborg writes (36). All of this "titillation" is part of the legal "culture" (36) the writer continues, and it is part of the "corporate lawyer's surrender to the ethic of...
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