Test Your Legal Trivia Knowledge: Who Rocked the Law?

Reprinted from The “Companion Text” to Law School: Understanding and Surviving Life with a Law Student (West 2012) with permission from Thomson Reuters.

Quiz clue.

Question. While some people purport to “hate” lawyers, the public remains fascinated by them, as evidenced by all the attention the legal profession receives in the entertainment world.  Since the 1960s, more than fifty television series about lawyers have been produced.  Well over 100 “lawyer movies” have been brought to the big screen and lawyer novelists such as John Grisham sell hundreds of millions of books.  What about musical entertainment?  Which of the following is not a real song by a popular artist?

A.  I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)

B.  Lawyers in Love

C.  Sue Me, Sue You Blues

D.  My Lawyer Bit My Doctor

E.  Lawyers, Guns & Money

Answer: D.  “My Lawyer Bit My Doctor” is not a real song, although it sounds like it could be a hit.  The Bobby Fuller Four made I Fought the Law (and the Law Won) into a top 10 hit in 1964.  Sadly, Fuller was found dead in his car shortly after he tasted fame.  The death was ruled a suicide/accident, although some suspected Fuller was murdered.  John Mellencamp paid homage to Fuller in his song, R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (“There was Frankie Lymon, Bobby Fuller, Mitch Ryder (they were rockin’).”  Jackson Brown’s Lawyers in Love reached the Top 40 in 1983, while his album of the same name made it all the way to #8 in the charts.  The sardonic Sue Me, Sue You Blues appeared on former Beatle George Harrison’s second solo album, Living in the Material World, released in 1973.  Like many rock stars, Harrison had been embroiled in more than his fair share of litigation, including lawsuits over the breakup of the Beatles.  The song contained biting lyrics such as, “Bring your lawyer, and I’ll bring mine; get together and we could have a real bad time.”  Lawyers, Guns & Money was a typically over-the-top, hilarious tune from the late Warren Zevon that appeared on his 1978 album, Excitable Boy.  It includes the classic refrain line, “Send lawyers, guns, and money; the s*** has hit the fan.”