Who Might Your Murderer Character Want to Kill Off (Besides Lawyers)? Six People Who May Just Need to be Murdered

When I teach at writers conferences about using the law in stories, sometimes writers have no idea how helpful the law can be. One of the ways the law can really help your story is the characters. If you’re writing a murder mystery, you need a victim. Who gets killed and why are central to your story. Now, everybody knows the first thing you do is kill all the lawyers (at least if you want to overthrow a government, as was the context of Shakespeare’s quote). So I won’t bore you with why lawyers make good murder victims. Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).

I want to talk about some other people operating in the legal system who move around enough or who have enough information that they might be asking to be killed off. I’m going to tell you about six of them, but my book, The Writer’s Guide to the Courtroom: Let’s Quill All the Lawyers, has loads of suggestions if you need more.

1. Legal secretaries handle scheduling, prepare some court notices, draft some minor court documents, prepare letters, type (although this is becoming less of the job now that most attorneys prepare their initial drafts on their own computers), transcribe (again, more and more rare), file, deal with client and opposing counsel calls, and keep the lawyer’s office running smoothly. You could have a legal secretary who steals a trust account check and the lawyer faces disbarment, or who knows the lawyer is the perpetrator of a giant ponzi scheme. Legal secretaries know everything about the attorney, so they make great witnesses, or blackmailers. Which makes them excellent murder victims.

2. Office managers handle the business and human resources end of the law practice. If your paralegal or legal secretary character starts mouthing off to the boss, the office manager may be the one to step in. Maybe he steps in front of a two-by-four wielded by a disgruntled secretary. Office managers can also be used in your story to do the dirty work: getting rid of staff, hiding documents, moving people from department to department to keep any one person from knowing too much. Does this get them killed? Do they embezzle the trust money? They will probably have passwords and access to the firm’s accounts. Frequently seen in larger firms, this role is now being handled in midsize and smaller firms by someone trained in either accounting or administration. Could your office manager character be quietly figuring out how to retire? Could she be undercover trying to bring in a crooked attorney? Or did she fail to end up in witness protection before the mobster client whacked her?

3. Notaries witness and put their seal on signatures to verify that they obtained good identification from the person signing and that the signature is true, and certify copies of documents as being true copies. They can give oaths and perform wedding ceremonies. Banks, law firms, and copy centers frequently have staff notaries. Did your dishonest notary put a piece of property in their own name? Did they notarize a document with lots of white space and turn it into a will in their favor? Or, do they know uncover a forgery? Notaries can be witnesses to all kinds of fraud in your stories. They could be on the run, in witness protection, or a murder victim.

Unscrupulous notaries can use the Spanish translation, “notario” to bilk unsuspecting immigrants. The term notario can refer to a lawyer or someone of similar stature in some countries. Many notarios engage in the unauthorized practice of law here in the U.S. This comes up frequently in immigration fraud scams. Is your character an illegal immigrant who thought they were legal? Did the notario’s scam get them deported? Might be a motive for murder.

4. The judicial assistant, or JA, handles scheduling of hearings, trials, and other court proceedings. They usually handle and mark the evidence when it is admitted. In other words, they are the judge’s right arm. The demeanor of a judicial assistant is usually a good reflection of the demeanor of the judge. Dealing with a great JA is one of the great pleasures of legal secretaries, paralegals and lawyers. A nasty or incompetent JA can make legal life miserable. Your characters can show up to hearings that aren’t on the calendar, sit in the courtroom for hours as proceedings run late, have courtesy copies of motions and cases that were sent to the judge well in advance suddenly lost, and other JA-caused tribulations. Could drive anyone over the brink, couldn’t it? The JA could also witness bribery, threats, or jury tampering, which means they could blackmail a lawyer or judge. We know what happens to blackmailers and people who know too much, don’t we?

5. Process servers hand court documents to people who don’t want them. Lawsuits, orders to testify in court or bring documents, or orders to stop doing something, your characters won’t be happy to see a process server. Many people try to evade process servers, who have to get clever to serve those individuals. Fake pizza deliveries, exterminators, pulling fire alarms, could be used to humorous advantage in a story. Or get your process server killed. Most people realize that the process server is just doing their job. The likely reaction of your character served with a suit is to thank the process server. Boring, but accurate. But maybe they see the character with a mistress. Many process servers are also private investigators, and some have law enforcement backgrounds. Having a character who moves around lots, who is observant, and who knows something about the law could come in handy in all kinds of creative ways, couldn’t it? Or do they know too much?

6. A court reporter’s job is to write down every word said in court, listen to every word of every legal proceeding they cover, and be able to write it down accurately. A missed word can be catastrophic to a trial. Imagine the deposition transcript in your story with an omitted “not” or “no.” Or with the wrong speaker listed. What if a court reporter hates your attorney character because he broke up with her? She might decide to change the words. Court reporters are almost invisible. During breaks, lawyers and witnesses forget they’re even there, so court reporters hear all kinds of things they probably shouldn’t. You can have one hear a death threat or blackmail. If someone prone to murderous rage suddenly realizes the court reporter was present, who knows what might happen?

Some others who might be in a position to blackmail or witness something they shouldn’t have seen are bailiffs, runners/messengers, and paralegals. We all know that the motives for murder can be complex or simple, funny or horrible. Murder mystery writers need to choose their victims carefully.

Hopefully now you have some more ideas on who your murderer needs to knock off. The rest, my friends, is up to you. Happy writing!

Desperate Housewives Gets Pregnancy Discrimination Wrong

I must admit that Desperate Housewives is one of my guilty pleasures. Yes, I know it's silly. Mostly, it cracks me up. But something's been bugging me this season, and I can't sit quietly by any longer. It's this: they seem to think pregnant women should disclose their pregnancies before accepting a promotion, and if they don't, they owe an apology and deserve to be fired.

If you don't follow DH, here's what's going on. Lynette, mother of about a zillion kids already, is pregnant with twins. Insert comment here about birth control. Lynette was a high-powered advertising executive before she went out on the mommy track. When the kids grew up, she got a great job with Carlos's company. Carlos is Gabby's husband. Gabby is a good friend who lives across the street. Following so far?

When Lynette gets pregnant, she doesn't announce it right away. As most women do, she waits to make sure things are okay in the first trimester. Carlos comes into her office and announces that she's getting a big promotion. Not only that, but that she's getting it because the woman who should have gotten it is pregnant, and therefore he won't give it to her.

Right there, I hoped Lynette would go to HR and report the jerk, but she did what most of us would do. She accepted the promotion and hid her pregnancy as long as she could. She did a great job. Then Gabby found out.

Instead of the writers having Gabby swat Carlos upside the head for refusing to promote a pregnant woman in the first place, Gabby tells Carlos and tells him to fire Lynette. The writers missed a great opportunity to show a woman standing up to a sexist pig husband.

The lawyers for the company told Carlos to offer Lynette a promotion far, far away. That was genius. Real employers do this type of thing. It was way better than just having him fire her. I held out some hope that they might get things write.

Then they went completely off the deep end.

When Lynette turned down the promotion, Carlos stripped her of her duties and put her in a closet. Lynette sued. Good for her, except she'd first have to file a charge of discrimination with EEOC. Had the writers done this, they could have shown her watching Carlos squirm as he had to explain to Human Resources what he'd done.

Instead, the writers have me almost ready to stop watching. Because they have Gabby demanding that Lynette apologize. Lynette has come to the realization that she was all wrong. No! No! No! Lynette did what she should have done. Carlos should be fired. The jerk. And Gabby is no friend, demanding an apology for Lynette taking a promotion while pregnant.

DH has never been a bastion of feminist thought. But this time, they've crossed a line for me. I don't know if I can stand much more of them making pregnant working women feel like they have something to apologize for. If the writers had bothered to get the law on pregnancy discrimination right, their plot would be much more interesting.

The Good Wife Writers Miss An Opportunity

So far, I enjoy the new show The Good Wife despite the fact that legal shows usually make me want to throw things at the TV. Maybe it’s because Julianna Margulies makes anything watchable. Whatever it is, the show is pretty compelling.

However, last week’s show had a scene that had the main character essentially testifying during her examination of a witness. The scene involved a key piece of evidence exonerating a murder defendant, the time a set of sprinklers went on.

I understand the writers’ urge to speed through what might be pretty boring testimony about plumbing. But a lawyer who did this would be chastised, wouldn’t be allowed to do it, and would probably be committing malpractice. That’s because they need a witness to come on the stand and testify about the sprinkler times. If they didn’t bother to call the witness, the evidence couldn’t come in and their client would be in trouble.

Here’s what the writers could have done to satisfy my legal colleagues out there who would love to find a watchable legal drama.

There was a great character they underused. It was the owner of the house with the sprinklers who was also the father of a witness. The witness was a teen who wanted to testify, but would have had to admit to having drugs in the house. The father came out, screamed at our main character that she should leave his son alone, that his son would never testify, and threw her off the property. I thought he was pretty interesting, but that’s the last we ever saw of him.

The writers could have put the father on the stand. We wait for the fireworks. He’s ready to blast the lawyer, to deny his son’s involvement. She asks him only about the sprinklers. The prosecutor and the witness are scratching their heads. A great dramatic moment where the audience is wondering what's happening. Then she springs on us the importance of the sprinklers. The killer is unveiled.

Doing it the right way would have added about another minute to the show. I’m sure something else could have been cut. Had the writers been more accurate in their legal writing, they could have also had a better show for all of us.

There are over a million lawyers in the U.S. We watch TV and read books. With a little creativity and a bit of research, most writers could put together something we find watchable, and that also entertains the non-lawyer audience.