Oh my, this show made me so angry. Which made me sad, because I love Scandal and Grey's and who doesn't want to see the Shonda-version of their life?
I'll try not to repeat what's been said, but my issues:
1. How smooth that cold-calling was in the first class scene. Hah, no. I know, realistic dialogue is unrealistic, but like RealityGal said, the professor is usually looking for something specific and it's not going to be that neat.
2. "To kill" is not a mens rea. "Purpose to kill," would be the correct answer if the professor is teaching off the Model Penal Code (a sample, ideal penal code written by scholars. Crim law varies by state, so usually professors (at least at my school) teach off of that), "intent to kill" or something along those lines if you're using common law.
3. 100+ people and NO ONE except Wes came up with self-defense using some variation of Battered Women's Syndrome. Yeah, I don't buy it. That was definitely in their textbook.
4. Asking for a directed verdict is such a revolutionary strategy that you feel the need to break into your professor's house in the middle of the night to tell her about it?? Every defense attorney asks for a directed verdict at the end of the prosecution's case in chief. That's not obscure research, that's a very standard thing to do, and probably mentioned in the crim textbook's outline of how a case proceeds. This is also typically done without the jury present (at least in the state I'm most familiar with), so Keating's concerns are non-existent. And ridiculous, because every defense attorney asks for a directed verdict.
5. Nitpick, but at least at my school, the hippie/liberal/bleeding-heart/went to Brown types think prosecutors are the evil scum of the earth and defense attorneys are the ones doing god's work.
I'm also sure a ton of professional ethics were breeched and laws broken, but I don't know as much about that, so I'll mostly leave that be. Destroying evidence is *definitely* illegal, and I'd be shocked if pretending to be an insurance agent to get information wasn't a massive violation of ethics.
And, I have a feeling my law school experience is super atypical, but I go to school with a pile of extremely nice nerds. To give you some idea - we were joking after the sneak peak that property should be called "how to get away with an unclear conveyance," contracts is "how to get away with inadequate consideration," this show was going to be, "how to fail the MPRE." Nothing like this "everyone is trying to destroy me" mentality, but I guess ymmv.
