Legal education program to highlight what we learn about law from the movies

J. Howard Sunderman

    Retired Ohio appeals court judge Judge J. Howard Sunderman, now a professor at the University of Cincinnati Law school, is the presenter for a Kentucky Bar Association CLE. His program is called CLE at the Movies.
    So what have the movie taught us about law and police investigations?

1. During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
2. The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there, and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty.
3. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.
4. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
5. Kitchens don't have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.
6. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
7. Cars that crash will invariably burst into flames.
8. Stripping to the waist can make a man invulnerable to bullets.
9. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
10. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.
11. When confronted by an evil international terrorist, sarcasm and wisecracks are your best weapons.
12. Laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of an invading alien civilization.
13. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper clippings – especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.
14. All computer disks will work in all computers, regardless of software.
15. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
16. When they are alone, foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
17. If you are a hero, you never face charges for manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste by your actions.
18. You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
19. Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds – unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
20. When driving a car, it is normal to look not at the road but rather at the person sitting beside you or in the back seat for the entire journey.
21. Taxi drivers don't require exact or even approximate payment – the first bill you pull from your pocket is always correct.
22. Honest and hard-working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before retirement.
23. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of Yankee Stadium.
24. The Chief of Police will always suspend his star detective – or give him forty-eight hours to finish the job.
24. Television and radio news bulletins usually contain a story that affects the plot at that precise moment.
25. You're likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart from back home.
26. If you need to reload your gun, you will always have more ammunition even if you weren't carrying any before.
27. It doesn't matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a martial arts fight – your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out each of their predecessors.

    The Kentucky Bar does a good job with lawyer education. Their bar convention is a working convention reasonably priced, versus the Mississippi Bar Convention, which is designed as a week-long vacation for the whole family. The Kentucky Bar Convention CLE is top-notch.
    In addition to having a good education program at the annual convention, the Kentucky Bar offers at no charge an annual two-day Kentucky Law Update. In other words, free CLE.

Curtis Wilkie

    The Kentucky Bar Association convention is June 19-21 in Louisville, Ky.
    Oh, and Ole Miss journalism professor Curtis Wilkie will be there, with a one-hour CLE on his book, The Fall of the House of Zeus, on Dickie Scruggs and the Mississippi judicial bribery scandal.