The smartest guy in the room
Sunday, 1 February 2026
Growing up, I wanted to be lawyer.
Well, not so much wanted to be a lawyer, as thought that was probably the best employment route for me.
I don’t really know why, other than being gabby and winning public speaking prizes at college, and being too crap at science to contemplate being a doctor, and too dumb at maths to do anything with numbers.
So I enrolled in first year law at university. Within a fortnight, I’d realised I’d made a terrible mistake.
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The C+ I received at year’s end was as resounding a condemnation of my legal career prospects as it was a haughty humiliation from the law professors: You are not worthy.
The + on the end of the C was a patronising coda to the course: You weren’t the worst. But you weren’t far off. Off you go now.
So off I went.
My partner, who never got anything below a B in her life, rightly revisits my LAWS101 result in asserting her academic and intellectual superiority.
But, remarkably, given this embarrassment, I’ve remained fascinated by the law, and especially how it’s wielded in the world of crime.
I’ve covered innumerable cases, and sat through trials and appeals.
I’ve wondered whether, if I’d had talent and stamina and endured law school, what side of the court I might have ended up on: The one trying to send someone to jail, or the one trying to prevent that happening.
I thought about it the other night when watching Rudy Baylor.
Rudy is a character in the new TV series The Rainmaker, based on a John Grisham book.
He’s fresh out of law school and been hired by a big firm, only to blow it, and end up working for a street-scrapping, ambulance-chasing outfit.
But Rudy’s the good guy. Rudy’s rooting for the little guy. Rudy, despite being a little hot-headed, is the cool one.
He exposes the truth, he exposes the villains, he takes down the big firm and bad men.
Rudy can’t fail.
It’s facile fiction, for sure. But it’s fun, and leaves you comfortably warm in an “against the odds” way.
The reality is, however, the odds are usually stacked against the Rudys of the legal world.
In our court system, there are two sides: The prosecution, the lawyers paid by the State to prove someone is guilty; and the defence, who are trying to prove the accused in the dock is innocent, or at least shouldn’t go to jail.
Yes, yes, of course it’s not that simple.
Yet it actually is.
Prosecutors have the support of the police, and the government’s forensic service. The defence have whatever the accused can afford, or convince legal aid to cover.
As great defence lawyer Greg King once described it, it’s like the All Blacks playing Vanuatu.
But despite being the underdogs, curiously, in the public’s mind the defence are invariably seen as the bad guys.
They’re the guns for hire trying to get guilty people off. They’re the amoral mercenaries prepared to release dangerous criminals back on to the streets. They’re consciencelessness swanning around in robes, indifferent to victims’ suffering.
Bugger Atticus Finch, and Perry Mason, and the Lincoln Lawyer and their tricky cohort.
In the mind of the baying naysayers, where there’s smoke there’s fire/the police wouldn’t have charged someone unless there was good reason/everyone always says they’re innocent.
That’s the easy trope - until you get charged with something.
At that point, the once-contemptible defence counsel becomes your counsellor, your confessor, your last hope.
At that point, you suddenly realise how important defence lawyers are, and wonder just why it is they get paid less per hour than prosecutors.
Why is it defence lawyers are seen as scum?
Few would ever argue a surgeon shouldn’t operate on an injured criminal, or a doctor not minister to someone whose deeds are unlikeable. So why should defence lawyers be overwhelmed with opprobrium for representing the unlikeable, and ensuring the system stays straight?
I thought about this the other day, not because of Rudy Baylor, but because of Jack Oliver-Hood.
Oliver-Hood was a shooting star in the New Zealand legal profession. His work straddled civil as well as criminal law, where he helped defend Mark Lundy, and prove Gail Maney had been wrongfully convicted of murder.
On January 19, Oliver-Hood drowned at Hahei Beach, swimming at his happy place. He was 37.
Tributes were quick and copious: From former judges, to his former babysitter (“He was a bright, beautiful star”); from court colleagues, to his cleaner (“He’s an angel to me”).
I met Oliver-Hood when covering Mark Lundy’s case. He struck me as someone who truly was the smartest guy in the room.
I liked him a lot.
So did pretty much everyone else, it seems. Along with his kindness, integrity, and humour, they all mentioned his intelligence.
Jack was a way better person than me.
Jack would have never got a C+.