The Public’s Role in Lawyers’ Ability to “Outwit, Outplay, and Outlast” on Survivor

One needs only to look up quotations about lawyers to confirm that many people view the profession in a negative light. Charles Dickens said, “[i]f there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”[1]  In Henry VI, William Shakespeare wrote, “[t]he first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”[2]  Even more modern depictions of attorneys illustrate how the notion of the practice of law being a noble pursuit has degraded over time, especially in the United States.  The most popular depictions of lawyering on Television have transitioned from the days of Perry Mason[3] and Law and Order[4] to the more amoral, nefarious depiction seen in Better Call Saul.[5]  Nationally, people do not have a positive viewpoint of attorneys anymore.  This view of the legal practice has changed drastically as the 21st century began.  In “The Public’s Perception of Attorneys: A Time to Be Proactive,” Robert Clifford discusses the decline of lawyer’s public perception.[6]  Clifford attributes the decline to a diminishing media depiction of lawyers as positive role models, and expresses some sticking points that many Americans have with the occupation: “[T]he public does not view competency as an issue. The public’s disaffection is rooted in lawyers’ winning-at-all-costs tactics and in their profit-seeking orientation. At the very least, this latest snapshot of the public's attitude confirms that there is a need for improvement.”[7]

On the flip side, there are notable representations of attorneys in the media that perpetuate certain positive attributes to continually be associated with careers in the law.  Gary Hengstler discusses an ABA poll concerning some of the traits associated with lawyers in America, and among the most commonly mentioned are advocating for their clients, protecting basic rights and defending the underdog.[8]  Indeed, many of the positive attributes that one can ascribe to lawyers include the things that would make individuals pursue that line of work in the first place (i.e., intelligence, strong moral character, analytical skills and ability to advocate).[9]

One’s occupation can certainly affect how others perceive them, whether negative or positive, and these perceptions are sometimes difficult to shake.  The media representations and polling results illustrate how the population views attorneys as intelligent or cunning, as an advocate or a slimy individual, as a truth seeker or a manipulator of the truth.[10]  These perceptions can carry a stigma, as evidenced by people’s efforts to try and win money on a social strategy reality competition show.  One particular social strategy reality competition show with many attorney-contestants in its over twenty-year span is Survivor.

In an article for The Washington Post about Survivor’s impact on the television landscape, Emily Yahr wrote about Mark Burnett’s sudden epiphany following the premiere of Survivor that he had created a monumental new show format: “It was unlike anything that had ever been on broadcast TV before. And it was then that Burnett realized he had something special.”[11]  This initial conceit is still, over two decades after the initial premiere of Survivor, the way the show works; a group of strangers from different walks of life compete in challenges and vote each other out until a group of voted out players form the jury and get to vote for who wins the $1,000,000 and title of “Sole Survivor”.[12] 

As Survivor contestants compete and vote each other out, they get to know about each other’s lives, personalities, and backgrounds.  One need only look at the outcomes for legal professionals in the game to see a possible connection between people’s perceptions of lawyers and their level of achievement on the show.[13]  Over the past forty-three seasons of Survivor, there are fifty total games played by people whose listed occupation was some variation of attorney, law student, judge, or some sort of legal professional.[14]  These fifty “games” played includes ten people who have played Survivor multiple times.[15]  Of the forty legal professionals who competed on the show, only two went on to win the game.[16]  John Cochran in season twenty-six, Survivor: Caramoan,[17] and Nick Wilson in season thirty-seven, Survivor: David vs. Goliath,[18] are the only two that have won the game, and both have circumstances worth considering.

John Cochran was a Harvard Law Student at the time, who was such a huge Survivor fan, that for one of his classes, he wrote a paper analyzing the American jury system with the jury system seen on Survivor.[19]  On Cochran’s second attempt at playing the game. following his eighth-place finish on season twenty-three, Survivor: South Pacific, he won the game unanimously and became only the second person to play a “perfect” game by never receiving an elimination vote and obtaining all the jury votes to win.[20]  After Cochran won his $1,000,000 on Survivor, he went on to not practice law, but instead has become a television writer for shows like The Millers and Star Trek: Lower Decks.[21] 

The second winner, Nick Wilson, was a public defender while on Survivor: David vs. Goliath.[22]  However, the strategy Wilson used to win involved some deception; instead of admitting to being a public defender, Wilson chose to tell his fellow contestants that he was a social worker for the public defender’s office.[23]  It is worth noting these distinctions because in the history of Survivor, the only lawyer who won lied about his profession, making him one of two legal professionals to win Survivor out of forty who tried.

What can be taken from these statistics regarding lawyers on Survivor? Arguably, it is difficult to generalize, as the reasons for a person’s elimination from the show vary tremendously.  On one hand, the contestant may be viewed as the weakest link in challenges or someone who does not get along socially with the rest of the tribe.  On the other hand, contestants could be perceived as a threat to win or as someone who is untrustworthy.  This second point is a pivotal one as it relates to how attorneys are often perceived in life and can provide a crucial explanation for why Nick Wilson chose not to disclose his occupation.  As the show has gone on, a multitude of people have concealed what they do for a living to try and diminish how threatening they come across.  It may be because they were a former professional football player in the NFL and did not want others to think they already had enough money in their bank account.[24]  It could also be because one player is a police officer who doesn’t want to give the impression that they are reading people or any of the other potentially negative connotations to follow them into the game.[25]  As for Nick Wilson, his reason for hiding his true profession was to have his competitors underestimate him by simply coming across as the ‘friendly country boy.’[26]  Shows analogous to Survivor have had a similar level of success for attorneys.  Big Brother aired the same year as Survivor and involves a similar game being played in a house, as opposed to on an island, that has only seen four attorneys in its twenty-four seasons.[27]  Of those four, Xavier Prather is the only attorney that won the grand prize.[28]  Prather, employing the same strategy as Nick Wilson, pretended he was not an attorney, but rather a bartender.[29]

It is clear that the legal profession comes with some preconceived ideas of what attorneys are like.  Those associations can certainly be negative, as Hengstler pointed out in Vox Populi, “ethics is another stumbling block . . . barely one in five (22 percent) said the phrase ‘honest and ethical’ describes lawyers . . . [but] [n]early twice as many (40 percent) said this description does not apply.”[30]  They could also be positive, as lawyers can often be considered highly intelligent, and good at public speaking, which definitely impacts people’s desires to eliminate in a game for $1,000,000.  However, there is far more support from law review articles that imply a longstanding hatred by the public towards lawyers, and this is likely a strong consideration for attorneys entering a game like Survivor: “Much of the public’s attitude toward lawyers generally is attributable to the lawyer's role in our society.  People frequently come into contact with lawyers during stressful events in their lives - debt collections and foreclosures, divorce, and death of loved ones.  They naturally associate lawyers with those events.”[31]  It is uncertain if this cultural animosity is learned through media, psychological in association with negative life events, or just a longstanding cultural understanding of what the profession means about lawyers as individuals.  All of these explanations do, to an extent, explain why over the twenty-plus year history of shows like Survivor, it is rare that an attorney does well enough to win the grand prize.

So, if an attorney wants to win a show like Survivor, their best bet may be to conceal that information from the rest of the contestants.  Otherwise, they run the risk of someone evoking the Shakespearean battle cry, “[t]he first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”[32]

[1] Charles Dickens, Dickens Quotations, UMass Lowell, https://www.uml.edu/conferences/dickens-in-lowell/fast-facts/quotations.aspx#:~:text=Reflect%20upon%20your%20present%20blessings,which%20all%20men%20have%20some.&text=If%20there%20were%20no%20bad,would%20be%20no%20good%20lawyers (last visited Feb 20, 2023) (citing Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People (Chapman and Hall 1839)).

[2] William Shakespeare, Henry VI act 4, sc. 2, l. 75.

[3] Perry Mason (CBS 1957).

[4] Law and Order (NBC Universal 1990).

[5] Better Call Saul (AMC 2015).

[6] See generally Robert A. Clifford, The Public’s Perception of Attorneys: A Time to be Proactive, 50 DePaul L. Rev. 1081, 1083. (2001).

[7] Id. at 1083.

[8] Gary A. Hengstler, Vox Populi: The Public Perception of Lawyers: ABA Poll, 79 ABA J. 60, 61 (1993).

[9] Id. at 64.

[10] Id. at 63.

[11] Emily Yahr, ‘Survivor’ Changed Television Forever and it Still Endures. What’s the Secret?, Wash. Post (May 29, 2015, 7:00 AM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/05/29/survivor-changed-television-forever-and-it-still-endures-whats-the-secret/.

[12] Survivor (CBS 2000).

[13] See Figure 1.

[14] List of Survivor (American TV Series) Contestants, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Survivor_(American_TV_series)_contestants (last updated Feb. 25, 2023).

[15] See Figure 1.

[16] See Figure 1.

[17] Survivor: Caramoan (CBS 2013).

[18] Survivor: David vs. Goliath (CBS 2018).

[19] Martha Neil, Harvard Law Student Who Wrote Prizewinning Class Paper About Survivor Is Now on the Show, ABA J. (Sept. 21, 2011, 9:49 PM), https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/harvard_law_student_who_wrote_prize-winning_class_paper_about_survivor_is_n/.

[20] Perfect Game, Fandom: Survivor Wiki, https://survivor.fandom.com/wiki/Perfect_Game (last visited Feb. 26, 2023).

[21] Kimberly Nordyke, ‘Survivor: Caramoan’ Winner John Cochran Lands CBS Writing Gig, The Hollywood Rep. (May 23, 2013, 10:15 PM), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/survivor-caramoan-winner-john-cochran-557897/.

[22] Survivor: David vs. Goliath, supra note 18.

[23] Nick Wilson (’16) Wins 37th Season of “Survivor”, Ala. L. (Jan. 24, 2019), https://www.law.ua.edu/blog/news/nick-wilson-16-wins-37th-season-of-survivor/#:~:text=Wilson's%20omission%20was%20part%20of,underestimate%20him%20and%20his%20abilities.

[24] Tatiana Morales, Game over for Gary, CBS News (Nov. 28, 2005, 11:42 AM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/game-over-for-gary/.

[25] Kimberly Nordyke, ‘Survivor: Cagayan’ Winner Reveals Plans for $1M Prize; Burning Questions Answered, The Hollywood Rep. (May 21, 2014, 10:26 PM), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/survivor-cagayan-winner-reveals-plans-706423/.

[26] Nick Wilson (’16) Wins 37th Season of “Survivor”, supra note 23.

[27] Big Brother (CBS 2000).

[28] List of Big Brother (American TV Series) Houseguests, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Big_Brother_(American_TV_series)_houseguests (last updated Feb. 25, 2023).

[29] Xavier Prather, Fandom: Big Brother Wiki, https://bigbrother.fandom.com/wiki/Xavier_Prather (last visited Feb. 21, 2023).

[30] Hengstler, supra note 8, at 62.

[31] Leonard Gross, The Public Hates Lawyers: Why Should We Care?, 29 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1405, 1420 (1999).

[32] Shakespeare, supra note 2.

[33] Data adapted from List of Survivor (American TV Series) Contestants, supra note 14.