There has been a lot of noise this week about a new reality series featuring a small New York firm.
The daily reality show will revolve around lawyers giving advice to everyday people. Stories will be shot on location, and advice will be dished out in-studio by Joseph Tacopina, head of the firm, and a panel of legal eagles.
The show, to be called “Legal Ease,” will take place at Tacopina Siegel & Turano.
Having been among the very few people who watched it, we’d like to remind everyone of a previous failed effort at a legal reality show. Details after the jump.
We’re talking about “The Law Firm,” a blatant ripoff of “The Apprentice,” featuring Roy Black in the Donald Trump role.
Despite a stellar pedigree, the show bombed. Spectacularly. As the Washington Post described it in October 2005:
Expected to be a huge hit for NBC, the reality debut of super-producer David E. Kelley tanked so badly it was bumped after two episodes to Bravo — where it tanked again, so badly the cable channel yanked it off prime time. The final show aired Saturday — at noon. Ouch.
Let’s compare.
Kelly produced Ally McBeal and The Practice, among other hits. Never heard of Sternberg Productions or Weinberger Media?
Sternberg Prods.’ recent credits include “Shatner’s Raw Nerve” (Bio Channel), “The Academy” (Fox Reality) and “Catch 21″ (GSN). Weinberger Media recently launched “On the Case With Paula Zahn” for Discovery Networks.
Advantage: The Law Firm.
Roy Black got William Kennedy Smith acquitted of rape. Then he married one of the jurors. Joseph Tacopina got fired by Foxy Brown when he was defending her against charges she had gone berserk in a nail salon.
Advantage: The Law Firm.
The Law Firm featured 12 highly credentialed, up-and-coming lawyers, including:
- $250,000 winner Michael Cavalluzzi, who has his own shop in Beverly Hills;
- Olivier Taillieu of Zuber & Taillieu, a Los Angeles boutique we profiled a while ago;
- Barrett Rubens, Special Litigation Counsel at City of Chicago Department of Law; and
- Elizabeth Bradley, “the first American law student to hold an internship at the Tijuana, Mexico office of Baker & McKenzie.”
The Tacopina firm consists of three partners and one of counsel. One of the partners, Stephen Turano, worked at Lord Day (now Locke Lord) and Chadbourne. George Vomvolakis, the counsel, spent six years in the NY DA’s office.
Advantage: The Law Firm. (Obviously, the internship in TJ tips the balance)
It’s also pretty funny how perception of reality shows has changed over the past few years. The New York Law Journal struggled to find a lawyer with anything nice to say about The Law Firm:
“It strikes me as boring, frivolous, pointless and potentially unethical,” said Ronald L. Kuby of Kuby & Perez. As co-host of the early-morning WABC talk radio program “Curtis and Kuby,” he added, “But far be it from me to criticize somebody else’s media whoring.”
And that’s for a show that had a great pedigree! Now no one thinks twice of a legal-reality show, despite it having nothing apparently going for it.
So better producer plus better figurehead plus better cast, and it still bombed. We’ve got low expectations for this one.
Despite all that, Cardozo is thinking about doing a law-school reality show. Oh brother.
Related posts:
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.