Before and during law school at the University of Alberta I read a lot of legal thrillers and watched any legal type movie that I could find.  Some of my favourite movies were Runaway Jury, The Firm, A Civil Action, The Paper Chase and A Few Good Men.  For books, I liked King of Torts, Kafka’s The Trial, L’etranger by Albert Camus, and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Each book and movie has had some influence on me as a law student and as a lawyer.  Even more recently, I designed the interior of our office building after the set of Suits.

Most legal books and movies and television shows are not very realistic.  How can they be?  The law can be exciting but often it’s a bit boring from a dramatic or literary point of view.  For example, I always laugh when the lawyers come into the office of a partner on Suits with a file that has a few pages of paper in it and say they have found the solution.  My files tend to be many hundreds of pages and sometimes take up boxes, even though we try to be as paperless as possible.

What media has influenced you towards choosing a legal career?  In your practice of law?