Shadowing Practice: Real Lawyer Reacts to Suits (Episode 2 - Cell Phone Patent Problems!) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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This video was brought to you by CuriosityStream.
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And since you're the one who screwed me,
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I'd say you owe me one.
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Technically, he screwed his wife.
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Hey, Legal Eagles, it's time to think like a lawyer.
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You asked for it, so more analysis of suits.
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Today we are covering the second episode in the first season.
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I think I will keep going with the first season,
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but if there are specific episodes later on in this series that are especially ripe for legal analysis,
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please let me know and maybe I'll jump ahead.
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As always, of course, please subscribe and comment in the form of an objection,
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which I will either sustain or overrule.
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And of course, stick around until the end of this video where I give Suits episode two a grade for legal realism.
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So, without further ado, let's dig in to the second episode of Suits.
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Come on, what do you say,
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we go five out of nine?
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You can keep abusing me?
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No, thank you, I'm done.
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Oh, come on, I'll spot you three.
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Mid-time's over, Wyatt, they're here.
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They're here?
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Get set up in the conference room.
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Yeah, no, I'll just, uh...
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Get set up in the conference room.
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I have never seen a law office that has a game room like that.
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Even in New York where law offices for big firms can be pretty nice,
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they don't really look anything like the kind of Silicon Valley startup offices that you see often on TV,
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so this is not a particularly realistic depiction of what a law firm looks like.
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Wait, wait, where do you think you're going? into the room with the people.
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Wrong, that's the adult table in there and you haven't earned the privilege yet.
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I played air hockey with him.
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You need to go back to the office and file a patent for the phone.
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A patent?
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I don't know how to file a patent.
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What?
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Figure it out.
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Can't we do that after?
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No. So that would be crazy to wait to file a patent for this technology that you're trying to get funding for.
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Effectively what's happening here is that they're going to publish the technology
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that they want these people to invest in before they have protected it.
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We are only about a minute and a half into this episode
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and this is already malpractice that would probably get these guys disbarred.
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On top of that, this meeting is only gonna last a couple of hours
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and it's always a good idea to make sure your entire
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legal team is up to date with all the information that's going back and forth.
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So if this is a big investment deal,
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Mike should be in there to learn the facts on the ground and he should have filed his patent months,
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if not years, ahead of this meeting.
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This is crazy.
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Okay, have you ever filed a patent before?
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I just got back from this meeting with Harvey and he wants me to file this patent,
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but I have no idea what that paperwork looks like.
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So, if I have any help in this arena,
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it would be with me.
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Isn't Mike supposed to be a genius of the law?
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Isn't that why they hired him?
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He's like the greatest legal mind of his generation,
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even though he doesn't have a law degree,
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and yet he's constantly going back to his paralegal for information about the most basic things that lawyers do?
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I sense some inconsistencies in this show and the writing so far.
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Mike Ross, allow me to introduce the Bainbridge briefs. Which stack?
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All of them.
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Wait a minute, are these all?
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Still printing?
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Yeah, I think it was about a half hour.
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Oh, it's six printers, 23 pages a minute,
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30 minutes, that's 4,140 pages.
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Plus all of this, which means the next time you negotiate a deal,
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I would suggest to get your facts straight.
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In reality, if you have gone to the printer with all of your briefs,
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all of those briefs have been proofed probably a dozen times by 10 different people in a big law firm like this.
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You would never go to the trouble of printing out thousands
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and thousands of pages of documents unless you were 100% certain
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that all of those documents were ready to be filed with the court.
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But what is accurate here and is kind of amusing is the way that they bind all of these documents.
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It's called velobinding.
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It's those sort of plastic jaws that you open up,
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you have a special machine that opens them up
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and then you place the briefs in them and then you close them up on top of them.
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That is, for certain courts,
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exactly how you have to submit your briefs.
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It's a real pain in the butt.
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So at least that attention to detail is fairly accurate.
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Please tell me that you filed that.
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Patent?
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No, not yet.
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What?
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I gave it to you yesterday.
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Same time I gave you my Bainbridge briefs.
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Which you haven't finished.
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I was here all night and I barely got through half.
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I was on hold for almost 11 minutes before I gave up on your patent.
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So, what's your point?
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All right, let's talk a little bit about what it means to file a patent.
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The paperwork to file a patent is not particularly complex.
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There are forms that you can use.
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It's not that hard.
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The problem is that filing for a patent is not just filing for a patent.
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It's all the work that goes into filing for the patent before you do it.
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If there is prior art,
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meaning that there is someone who filed a similar patent before yours or that your idea has already been taken somewhere else,
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then your patent will be invalid.
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So when you go to a law firm and ask that they file a patent on your behalf,
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you're not just asking for them to file the actual physical paperwork for the patent.
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What you're asking them to do is hundreds of hours of work where attorneys will cull through the database
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that contains all of the other prior applications,
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some of which have been denied,
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some of which have been approved,
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and they're looking for similar things that might invalidate your own patent.
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And in fact, if you're following politics,
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you might know that our acting attorney general,
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Matt Whitaker, was involved with a company called Worldwide Marketing,
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which was an infamous patent scam
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that was known for filing patents without doing the legwork to find out if there was prior art.
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So a lot of people who paid tens of thousands of
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dollars to this company in order to get patents approved found
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that their patents were actually invalidated because this company wasn't doing a prior art search.
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So it's crazy, number one,
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that they haven't filed a patent for this thing before they've gone to investors.
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And number two, it's crazy that they think it's just a simple matter of filing for the patent itself,
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when in fact it's the hundreds if not thousands of hours it takes for the legwork before you file for that patent.
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You wanted to see me?
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See you.
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I look for your work on the Bainbridge briefs.
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Spectacular.
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It's just proofing.
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How can proofing something be spectacular?
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What's up?
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I just heard from Wyatt.
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He got a response from the patent office.
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You got a response back from the patent office a day after you filed your patent?
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That does not happen. And?
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It's been denied.
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What?
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Evidently, there was a similar claim.
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Wait, what do you mean?
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Somebody beat us to it?
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No, someone beat you to it.
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They filed less than 24 hours ago,
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which means you filed a day later than you said you would.
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Oh my God.
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Well, yeah, that's why you file for a patent months,
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if not years, before you start getting investments from outside people.
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That's the problem with going to investors before you've gotten the patent.
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This whole episode is so stupid.
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What's gonna happen now?
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I suggest you get on the phone,
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call the patent office, and find out who beat us to it.
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Then you're gonna have Donna find any judge who will listen
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so we can get an injunction and stop whoever it is from launching their product first.
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Okay.
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An injunction on what grounds?
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It's true that sometimes you can seek the extraordinary relief from a court,
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an injunction, which is basically a court order that prevents someone from doing something or it forces them to do something.
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But you have to have legal grounds to do it.
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And the fact that someone filed a patent based on the information
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that you provided to them is not grounds for an injunction,
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unless there was some sort of non-disclosure agreement at the investors meeting,
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but that seems relatively unlikely.
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We'll see.
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Not a good legal tactic so far.
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Hey, Harvey.
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Did you tell him it was me?
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Why would I do that?
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I'm responsible for you.
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It was me.
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Yeah.
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And that would be true whether Mike was actually an attorney or not,
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which he is not in this case.
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Harvey is the lead attorney.
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He's the one that's signing the papers most likely,
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and so it's his neck on the line.
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Also, by the way, it was his decision not to file for a patent until after he met with investors.
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That is malpractice.
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He'd get totally disbarred for that.
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Did you not see the sign outside?
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Just putting it away, Your Honor.
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It should already be in your pocket,
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but you were running late,
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so perhaps that's why it wasn't.
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Let the record show the counsel is fined $1,000 for failing to follow the poster rules of the court.
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Your Honor, I didn't mean to.
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And for mouthing off.
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Mouthing off?
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Yeah, so that's a bit extreme,
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but I have seen judges throw attorneys out of their courtroom for cell phones whose ringers go off.
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I've never seen a judge chastise counsel for just displaying a cell phone,
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that's not making any noise,
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but if the rules of the court say that you can't have a cell phone in that courtroom,
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then you can't have a cell phone in that courtroom.
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The judge gets to decide what goes on in his or her court.
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And there are plenty of courts that don't even let you take a cell phone into the building itself.
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That is the case with a lot of the federal courthouses in Virginia and Washington DC where I practice.
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So you really have to be careful and know the rules of the court before you head into the courthouse.
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Request an item.
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Court adjourned for the morning.
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Better luck next time, Harvey.
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From now on, I want him when I go against you.
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Your Honor, I have- Send him in.
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Oh no, no, no, no,
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no. You do not get to have a private meeting with the judge without opposing counsel present.
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This is an ex parte communication.
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This is totally improper, even though the judge has already denied this request.
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There might be an appeal,
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there might be other issues in this particular case.
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This is totally improper to meet with one side and not the other.
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This should never happen.
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I could have you brought up a review for talking to me like that.
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Then we can get it all on record.
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Get what?
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Whatever it is that you seem to have against me for no apparent reason,
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I have a solid argument for any reasonable judge to grant my injunction.
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So solid, it begs the question,
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why do you have it in for me?
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And I don't even know your first name.
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Really?
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My wife never mentioned it?
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Your wife?
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The woman you had an affair with last month?
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Ah, okay, so that is what we call a classic conflict of interest.
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In California, what you would do is file 170.6,
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which is a request for the judge to recuse themselves.
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There is no possible way that this judge gets to preside over this particular case when he has a huge bias problem.
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Now that Harvey knows this information,
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he absolutely should bring this judge up on review.
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The damage has already been done though.
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The judge has issued his ruling,
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so he can't back out now.
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There is not going to be a good outcome for this judge regardless of what unscrupulous conduct Harvey has engaged in here.
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This is not good.
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Thank God, he's terrible at tennis.
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Both terrible at tennis.
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My earlier ruling wasn't clear enough for you?
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Crystal, but I didn't want you to suffer for it.
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You see, if you don't sign my injunction,
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there's going to be a lawsuit.
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And when the next judge sees all the facts,
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he's going to overturn your ruling.
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You may be right.
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But by then your clients will have dumped you.
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You may be right, but that sterling reputation that you value so highly, down the tubes.
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Oh boy, okay, so this is called blackmail.
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This is incredibly unethical, not to mention this is yet another ex parte communication,
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which is totally improper.
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Man, I mean, at this point Harvey's gonna get disbarred.
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The judge might be disbarred and removed from the bench if this ever comes to light.
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This is violating your oath as an attorney.
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You file for a divorce?
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Soon enough?
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Perhaps we could discuss a little quid pro quo before I do.
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I'm listening.
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You sign a document that says you slept with my wife,
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I'll give you your injunction.
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Why would you want me to do that?
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To prevent her from taking me for half of everything I own.
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So what you're saying is,
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you'd like to blackmail me.
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I'm saying we could both benefit.
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You're blackmailing each other.
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He just came in there and tried to blackmail the judge into giving him a verdict that he wanted,
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and now the judge is trying to blackmail him right back.
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I mean, these two deserve each other.
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And since you're the one who screwed me,
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I'd say you owe me one.
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Technically, he screwed his wife.
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And he did the snapping thing,
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and Gregory- Look at me.
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You're I.
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Get out.
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No, that is not a good sign.
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Look, this is not my fault, all right?
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Lewis made me do it.
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Lewis did, right.
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He put a gun to your head and made you smoke pot.
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Yeah, he did.
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He pulled out the drug test,
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which I failed, by the way,
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and then he told me that if I didn't smoke pot to help him land this new client,
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that he'd fire me.
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It's not so different than asking someone out for drinks, is it?
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You and I had a deal.
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I'm sorry.
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And if next time Lewis asks you to do something that I told you not to do, what then?
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I told you that I did not have a choice.
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Oh, because he had a gun to your head.
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Yes!
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And what are your choices if someone puts a gun to your head?
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What are you talking about?
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You do what they say or they shoot you.
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Wrong.
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You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one,
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or you call their bluff,
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or you do any one of 146 other things.
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This is a really interesting situation.
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I think that Lewis might be liable for conspiracy to engage in illegal drug consumption.
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Obviously, Mike is guilty of having consumed an illicit substance in New York it's still illegal to consume marijuana,
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but he was induced to do so by Lewis.
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They engaged in an agreement for him to engage in this particular action for the gain of both of those individuals.
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So I think that given that there is an agreement,
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there is an overt act to further the ends of the conspiracy here,
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I think Lewis may in fact also be guilty of the object of the conspiracy itself
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so Louis is as culpable as Mike for engaging in smoking marijuana.
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Interesting legal situation.
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Do you know how long it was before I got to sit at the adult table?
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It was when I brought in my first client,
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which I don't recall you having done it.
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And when you screwed up that patent and Wyatt went apeshit on me,
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I didn't put that on you,
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I took it on myself.
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I mean, you both royally screwed up that patent.
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That's not just Mike.
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Louis told me what you did at the club.
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I bet he didn't tell you the whole story.
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He told me enough to impress me.
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He landed the client.
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New business is hard.
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People will promise you the world,
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but until they sign that engagement letter, means nothing.
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Now, I don't know what you told Tom Keller,
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but bringing a client in at your age,
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that reminds me of Harvey.
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That's true.
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It is very unusual for junior associates to bring in new clients,
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especially potentially a summer associate like Mike.
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It's unclear to me whether he's a summer associate or a junior associate.
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He was interviewed as a summer associate,
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which is like an internship,
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but he is acting like a junior associate.
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Writers didn't quite get that one right.
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At any rate, it is incredibly unusual for a first year junior associate to bring in a client of any kind,
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and that is the way that you get promoted almost immediately.
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What are you showing us?
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Is this a website?
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Available at the SunTech domain name.
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All the design plans and calculations have been uploaded.
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Is this online now? Can be.
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Which means the whole world will have access to my designs.
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There'll be ten knockoffs of that phone before you can catch a cab back to your headquarters.
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We could file an injunction.
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Not before tomorrow and once that technology is out there.
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Good luck putting that genie back in the bottle.
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Well then we'll sue.
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But my client won't have any money.
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What he will have is credit for the initial design,
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which after he incorporates under a different name,
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will be worth a hell of a lot more money than the $20 million that you're offering.
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Yeah, except that if the other side's patent is valid,
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then they can sue anyone who uses those designs and builds the prototype without their permission.
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That's the point of the patent protection.
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And they would probably be able to sue this poor gentleman out of existence for a whole raft of things,
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including intentional interference with contract,
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disclosure of trade secrets, and still,
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at the end of the day,
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these nefarious guys on the other side still have their patent
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because Harvey and Mike didn't file their patent when they should have.
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So, yeah, this is probably yet another malpractice and disbarment trap.
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What is this?
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It's a copy of the Judicial Conduct Codes.
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A friend of mine works at the Attorney General's office who gave it to me.
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We had a nice chat about you.
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I told him if you were willing to blackmail someone once,
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chances are you'd done it before.
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He's very anxious to meet you.
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You think you can get away with screwing my wife and then have me investigated?
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You actually have it the wrong way around.
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The only thing I've done so far is have you investigated.
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What?
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I never actually slept with Lauren,
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but I knew you'd never believe me,
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so I kept my mouth shut.
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But now that she's getting a divorce,
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my policy no longer applies.
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And of course, she's free to date whoever she pleases.
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And she pleases me.
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Enjoy your evening, Donald.
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No honor among thieves.
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The judge should have gotten him to sign an affidavit at the same time that he issued his ruling,
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if he really was gonna follow through with the blackmail here.
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That was just poor lawyering on the judge's part.
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All right, so now it's time to give Suits episode two a grade for legal realism.
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There was some accurate discussion of what it takes to file for a patent,
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but also a complete disregard for all of the legwork that goes into it,
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and of course, all of the attorneys in this episode would have been disbarred many,
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many times over.
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Last time around, I gave Suits a B minus.
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I'm afraid this episode is slightly less realistic,
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so I'm going to have to downgrade it to a C plus.
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Suits is not exactly the most realistic show out there.
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Harvey and Mike seem to know nothing about the law,
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but if you're looking for the best documentaries and non-fiction movies that exist,
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you need to check out CuriosityStream.
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For example, I'm watching David Starkey's documentary on the Magna Carta,
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which explains how the 1215 Charter made everyone subject to the rule of law and became the foundation of the US Constitution.
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It's the same rule of law that Mike and Harvey disregard every single episode.
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Legal Eagles get a free account for 30 days by clicking the link below,
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or using the promo code LegalEagle.
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So a few days on CuriosityStream and you'll know more about the law than Harvey and Mike put together.
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So check out the link below,
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start learning about the real world,
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not the fictional world of Suits.
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And until next time, I'll see you in court.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice your spoken English by analyzing a scene from the popular television series "Suits," specifically the second episode. This session focuses on law-related vocabulary and conversational phrases that are essential for understanding and discussing legal matters. You'll improve your listening skills and speaking confidence while exploring a fun, engaging context. Additionally, learning English with YouTube videos like this can enhance your understanding of cultural references and everyday language use.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Patent: A legal document granting an inventor exclusive rights to their invention.
- Malpractice: Professional negligence, especially in the legal field, that results in harm.
- Invest: To allocate resources, usually money, with the expectation of generating an income or profit.
- Conference room: A designated space where meetings, discussions, and negotiations occur.
- Legal team: A group of lawyers and legal assistants working together on a case or project.
- Funding: Financial support for a project or business venture.
- Facts on the ground: Real, observable facts related to a situation or event.
- Earned privilege: A right or advantage obtained through effort or experience.
Practice Tips
To enhance your speaking and listening skills, use a shadowing app to practice alongside this video. As you watch, mimic the speech patterns, intonation, and rhythm of the speakers. Notice how the lawyer reacts to the dialogue—this will help you understand tone and context. The conversation in this episode moves at a moderate pace, so consider pausing periodically to repeat phrases or sentences. Here are some specific tips for effective shadow speaking:
- Start by listening to a short segment of the video, then pause and repeat what you heard, focusing on pronunciation and intonation.
- Record your voice as you shadow the characters. This will allow you to compare your speech with the original and identify areas for improvement.
- Pay attention to the legal terminology used. As you practice, incorporate these words into your own speaking exercises, especially if you are preparing for IELTS speaking practice.
- Engage with the content by discussing the episode, summarizing the key legal concepts in your own words, or quizzing yourself on the vocabulary.
By integrating this method into your routine, you will develop not only your vocabulary but also your overall fluency, making it easier to engage in conversations about legal topics in English.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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