MinnLawyer Blog

A commenter in my recent post about the growing disparity in lawyer income levels responded with a citation to the 1984 movie “Ghostbusters.”

Such a reference is particularly apt here in Minnesota because one of the major moments in the film involves an attack on New York City by a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, an obvious parody of the Pillsbury Doughboy. Pillsbury, of course, was a Minnesota company bought out by General Mills, yet another Minnesota Company, in 2001.

Chuck Lundberg

But more to the point for the legal community, Minneapolis attorney Chuck Lundberg, whose knowledge of ethics is rivaled only by his knowledge of movie references, cited to “Ghostbusters” in a footnote in his last Bench & Bar Column as chair of the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board. Here’s the original reference in the 2004 article (“In Pursuit of Ethical Lawyering“), along with the “Ghostbusters” footnote:

Here too, [attorney] discipline is important not just for rehabilitation purposes but also because of what it says about the significance of ethical practice: that the rules really do matter. Otherwise, we are no better than the pirate captain Barbossa in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” who famously explained that the vaunted Pirate’s Code “is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”5

 

5. Of course, this rules vs. guidelines quip is either a direct steal from, or an homage to, the classic scene in “Ghostbusters” (1984), where a very seductive Sigourney Weaver (Dana Barrett) — whose body has just been possessed by the god Zuul (the Gatekeeper) — has designs on Bill Murray (Peter Venkman):

DANA: Do you want this body? PETER: Is this a trick question?

 * *

DANA: Take me now, sub-creature.

* * *

PETER: I make it a rule never to get involved with possessed people.

[She grabs him and pulls him onto the bed.]

PETER: Actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.

Not much more to add to Lundberg’s apropos footnote, other than the next time I need a quick movie reference, I know who I’m gonna’ call.