When it comes to career moves, justice isn't that blind
By Ramonica Rice
Associate Editor
(CNN) -- "I'm very comfortable here. I enjoy the bench. I've been a lawyer for almost 28 years and I've got a good career."
Judge Mills Lane recalls his conversation with producers who approached him about presiding over a courtroom on television.
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"They said, 'Well judge, you're making a good living, but you can make a better living in television," says Lane. "I said, 'How much better living?'
"They told me -- and I said, 'Yep, it sure is a lot better living.'"
Lane is straightforward and to the point when explaining why he left the courtroom to be a judge on television. He makes no bones about it.
For more than eight years, Lane served as a district court judge in Reno, Nevada, but he gained notoriety through his second job as the boxing referee who disqualified Mike Tyson for biting the ear of Evander Holyfield during their 1997 bout.
Soon after the infamous "bite," Lane says, the phones were ringing off the hook. One of those calls carried an offer to have his own television show. Lane, who's married and has two teenage boys on their way to college, says he jumped at the opportunity to earn more money.
"It was the economic benefit," says Lane. "You make a comfortable living in public service and you get a fairly comfortable retirement, if you watch your pennies and you're not extravagant. But in television, if a show goes, you make a substantial amount of money. So, economically it just didn't make sense for me not to."
The crowded bench
With the viewing public's seemingly insatiable appetite for real-people courtroom melodrama, it's a good time for judges lucky enough to leap from the bench to the makeup chair. The ratings have shown that viewers are fascinated by TV judges resolving disputes among regular Joes and Josephines.
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"Judge Mills Lane" is one of 10 nationally syndicated court shows on daytime television. "Judge Judy" Scheindlin leads the robed pack. Some of the others include "Judge Greg Mathis," "Judge Joe Brown," "Judge Glenda Hatchett," "Moral Court" and "The People's Court."
For some TV judges, a bump in salary -- albeit a big incentive -- wasn't the only reason they cite for choosing television over the bench.
"One of the things that's important to me is to help people, as opposed to just getting up there and being sort of a pontificate, omnipotent and all-powerful individual lecturing folks from on high," says James Curtis of "Curtis Court."
"I'm trying to do something that's going to assist people in resolving and figuring out how to do things."
Curtis was never a judge off-camera. He was a prosecuting attorney in California, head of his own law-enforcement consulting firm, and legal expert for many news programs including CNBC's "Rivera Live" before he was pegged to preside over his own television courtroom. With his show, he now earns twice as much as he did as a prosecutor.
"It's more money and it's more fun," says CNN legal analyst Greta Van Susteren, host of "The Point With Greta Van Susteren" and co-host of "Burden of Proof".
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"You'll notice," Van Susteren says, "that part of the jobs that they have on television are very insignificant matters. In the real courtroom you have real life-or-death situations and you have incredible anguish.
"You have things like child abuse, failure to pay child support, first-degree murder, divorce when one doesn't want a divorce. It's just sort of a lark (in court television cases), in a sense -- people may feel passionate about their little disputes, but they are petty disputes. You get to play judge, it's light, you make more money and it's easier. And you don't get reversed."
According to Luke Bierman, director of the American Bar Association's (ABA) Justice Center, judges in the United States can make between $50,000 and $135,000, depending on their state and court level.
Case by case basis
Curtis recalls a "Curtis Court" case that involved a man from Michigan trying to recoup more than $1,000 in expenses from a wedding that never happened. The plaintiff said his bride-to-be called off the wedding and cheated on him with an ex-boyfriend. But the woman counter-sued for belongings left at the plaintiff's house and said she just needed more time to think things over.
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Cases like this are typical fodder for court-TV producers. They find them on the crowded dockets of small-claims courts across the country for the broadcast judges to resolve on their shows.
"One of the characteristics of the cases that you'll see on 'Curtis Court,'" says Curtis, "is that the people have some sort of relationship to one another, whether it's family members, neighbors, longtime friends, co-workers, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife or husband.
"What's really common is that all these people are where they don't want to be. They're suing someone whom they, for some reason or another, had a good relationship with. Now the relationship is broken down so severely that all they can do is to take this person to court to try to get their attention. It just manifests itself in the form of a lawsuit."
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Another characteristic of TV court shows is litigants representing themselves, although many of them have little or no experience as attorneys and most have never set foot in an actual courtroom. Litigants subject themselves to difficult questions fired at them by the TV judges.
"It's law entertainment," says Van Susteren. "There are some judges in the courtroom that are as tough if not tougher and meaner than Judge Judy. I think Judge Judy's conduct is fine for television, but it would not be fine in the real courtroom at all. She's rude to the litigants on television, but it's television.
"In the courtroom a judge should never forget that he or she is a public servant there to resolve disputes, whether it's a criminal or civil context. And of course, if the courtroom gets out of order, it's the judge's responsibility to maintain order. But you don't have to be rude or insolent in doing that. On television it's all part of the show."
Gaveling out a show
Lane and Curtis stress that upholding the law is most important, but they agree that shows must have hooks to attract viewers.
"Obviously to be successful and stay on TV, the show has to be entertaining," says Curtis. "You can stick to what's real about the relationship between these individuals. That, in and of itself, is entertainment enough to warrant being kept on the air."
The TV judges say they also feel their shows educate viewers about the inner workings of the court.
"There are people who think these shows aren't well done and aren't helping the justice system," says Lane. "I disagree. In resolving a case or two, it's imparting information to the public about the justice system."
Bierman of the ABA says courtroom justices' opinions run the gamut regarding reality-based TV court shows.
"Some judges are somewhat critical of how the TV shows deal with cases," Bierman says. "Cases are often more complicated. Trials are very different from the 22 minutes or however long a half-hour show gets to presents what's going on."
But he says other judges appreciate the public's interest in the justice system.
From "Perry Mason" to the original "The People's Court" to "L.A. Law" to "The Practice" and all the fiction and non-fiction courtroom dramas on television, history tells us that court shows are to stay.
"It's just as American as apple pie," Lane says. "People like to watch controversy and they like to see it resolved."
