Lawyers’ image and ethics in Hong Kong Television and Films: from social elite to ordinary professionals?

Abstract

As “Hollywood of the East”, Hong Kong has produced films and television dramas on lawyers since the 1980s. In 2009, the authors obtained a research grant from the University of Hong Kong to study the portrayal of lawyers’ image and ethics in Hong Kong television and films between 1980 and 2010. This paper present some preliminary findings of the research project by answering the three research questions. Firstly, what are the images and ethics of lawyers portrayed by different mass media as revealed in the existing academic literature? Secondly, what are the lawyers’ image and ethics as depicted in Hong Kong films and television dramas over the past three decades? Thirdly, what generalizations can be made about the characteristics of lawyers’ image and ethics as portrayed in such films and television dramas? On basis of a detailed study of three ‘sampled’ local film and television drama series that straddled across the past three decades, the authors reveal that three lawyers’ images, namely, ‘justice-centered’, ‘client-centre’ and ‘problem-centered’, emerged from the local mass media. Adopting the concept of ‘media framing’, the authors also argue that the local mass media has portrayed a change of lawyers’ image from social elites to ordinary professionals over the past thirty years.