Reaction Paper On The Movie

REACTION PAPER ON THE MOVIE
MY COUSIN VINNY
By: Jessy Francis Cabanilla
The movie instructs that lawyers must be fully prepared for trial
and that a lawyer’s confidence must be derived from his preparedness
and the mastery of his case. It doesn’t matter if it is your first case
ever as lawyer or a just another mundane case as a seasoned litigator,
you must always come fully prepared for the case. A lawyer who
learns the case as he the trial goes will end up like Vinny in the movie
on the arraignment part of the trial. Being put into shame by the trial
judge in an open court for being unprepared is already a bad thing;
letting your client down because of your lack of preparation and
knowledge of the procedure is even worst.
A line from Vinny in the movie is instructive, viz. “Building a case

is like building a house. Each piece of evidence is just another block.”
This to me sums up the whole essence of the movie in relation to our
subject Practice Court 1. The quote does not only state the obvious,
that is, evidence is indeed the building block of a case without which, a
case will hold no water. The quote also presupposes that in gathering
evidence, a lawyer is preparing for the case. In gathering evidence, a
lawyer already has a theory in his mind on how the flow of the case
will go. Each testimonial, object or circumstantial evidences infused in
a case is the result of a very meticulous preparation by a lawyer to the
furtherance of his goal, and that is the dispensation of justice and of
course the winning of the case.
Of course, mastery of the Rules of Court also makes or breaks a

case. The only problem is, gaining mastery of the procedure involves
experience. How then will a new lawyer on his first ever case like
Vinny stand a change with a seasoned state prosecutor? Surely, he
cannot beat the state prosecutor through experience. As in the movie
and as is in real life, full preparation of a lawyer on a case will stand a
chance or can even beat experience. A fully prepared greenhorn of a
lawyer can surely beat a well experienced or seasoned counsel who is
overloaded with cases and who have not mastered his case.
Obviously, in the movie, there was the factor of luck and not to
mention the fact that it is just a movie and that Vinny is the
protagonist. But there is a grain of truth on it and lawyers and law
students may gain something from the movie.
I liked the part where Vinny, an overconfident newbie lawyer,

admitted in a scene that he was afraid. He was afraid of what will
happen to his cousin, what will happen to the case, or what will
happen to his career as a lawyer. The truth is, fear, nervousness, or
doubt is not always a bad thing. Fear will make you want to be
prepared for a case; nervousness will make you rehearse your lines in
front of a mirror before appearing in court over and over again until it
will be like a walk in the park. Doubt, will let you check multiple times
your facts, the relevance of your evidences, and your knowledge of the
substantive and procedural part of the law before going to court.
Confidence must not only emanate from the fact that you tell to
yourself that you can do something. Confidence in going to court does
not necessarily mean you are a well experienced lawyer. Confidence,
whether you are a new lawyer or a well experienced lawyer emerges
from the fact that you are prepared for the case.
In the movie there was a line which made preparation for trial
analogous to repairing a car to wit: “It's a procedure. Like rebuilding a
carburetor has a procedure. You know, when you rebuild a carburetor,
the first thing you do is you take the carburetor off the manifold?
Supposing you skip the first step, and while you're replacing one of the
jets, you accidentally drop the jet, it goes down the carburetor, rolls
along the manifold, and goes into the head. You're f***ed. You just
learned the hard way that you gotta remove the carburetor first, right?
So that's all that happened to me today. I learned the hard way.
Actually, it was a good learning experience for me.” Indeed, trial
involves procedures and just like any procedures, there are step that
must be done first and these steps may be learned through experience
by trial and error or by adequate preparation and study.
If there is one mode of learning that a lawyer or by any person

by that matter must by all means avoid, is by learning the hard way.
Yes, one may argue that it does not matter whether you learn a lesson
the hard way for as long as you have learned, but, lessons learned by
lawyers the hard way may entail years in prison for his clients,
properties lost, reputations tarnished, or in other jurisdictions, death
through death sentence just because the lawyer was not prepared.
One scene in the movie that stood out for me which is not
directly related to the Practice Court subject is when Vinny admitted to
his cousin that it took him six times taking the bar exam before he
became a lawyer. To me, Vinny’s failure was not a sign of weakness as
he was as he said, a working student. It is for me more of a sign of a
very motivated person. A person so goal oriented that failures in the
bar will not deter him from taking the exam again until he reaches his
goal. That kind of attitude will give a lawyer who eventually passed the
bar exam the motivation to prepare more for each of his case in case
he pursues to become a trial lawyer.
To sum up, the movie although a comedy, is a somewhat

accurate depiction of lawyer in a trial proceeding. One of the must
accurate lesson in the movie as a matter of practice is to go to court
appropriately dressed as a lawyer; and as a matter of tactic in winning
the side of the judge, is to never ever argue with the judge because as
they say, “the judge is always right.”

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REACTION PAPER ON THE MOVIE

A line from Vinny in the movie is instructive, viz. “Building a case

Of course, mastery of the Rules of Court also makes or breaks a

I liked the part where Vinny, an overconfident newbie lawyer,

If there is one mode of learning that a lawyer or by any person

To sum up, the movie although a comedy, is a somewhat

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