5 Reasons Why “How To Get Away With Murder” Is Nothing Like Law School:

1.      No one would ever hire a first semester law student. First year students are babies. We know nothing and everyone in the profession knows that we know nothing. No self-respecting firm would allow someone with 4 weeks of law school training to interview a witness in a murder case. It just won’t happen. Sorry.

2.      You can absolutely not survive your first year devoting that much effort to one class. The 5 first year students in HTGAWM that work for Viola Davis spend every waking moment either in her class or at her firm working on a high-profile case. Every so often one of the students will mention they have to “study for their torts final” or “need to meet with their study group”…but when exactly are you going to have time to do that when you have to go down to the precinct and pretend to be a lawyer to bail your probably-murdered-Eliza-emo-neighbor out of jail? It’s just not possible. They are going to fail out of school and the show will be over after one season.

3.      You don’t learn the law from current cases. Viola Davis teaches her students the law through the current cases she is defending. If you have spent any time in a law class you would know that this is not the way it works. Traditionally, the law is learned through case law, meaning reading cases and deciphering the law through how the court determined the outcome of the case. So learning about a current case is pretty irrelevant considering there has been no decision about it yet.

4.      The immunity trophy. Can we talk about how absurd it is that Viola gives the student who performs the best for her firm a trophy of immunity towards the final? Law schools usually work on a system of one grade per class, meaning you take one final at the end of the semester and that is that only grade you have. Terrifying, right? There is no way in hades that a student would be allowed to simply not take a final.

5.      Ethics. Lawyers have to take an oath of ethical behavior when they enter the bar. I know lawyers don’t have a great reputation in this area, but Viola Davis takes this to a whole new level. In the second episode she gets her boyfriend to lie on the stand in order to win the case. She gets evidence from illegal sources and lies about where she got it to get it into court. Her interns tell the jury about jury nullification and then she denies it. And finally, spoiler alert, she covers up the murder of her husband in the finale. Like I said earlier, this show is going to end after just one season because she’s going to get her license taken away.