I was sitting at the bar of a Mexican restaurant in my Dallas neighborhood. A bar mate, hearing I was a lawyer, asked, "So, what are your favorite lawyer movies?" I thought about it and answered. My choices were not necessarily movies about lawyers, but movies that teach us how to be better lawyers.

Here's a fundamental truth: Being a lawyer is about being a human being. The practice of law, like the art of making movies, deals with archetypal themes: failing and forgiving, the dangers and rewards of idealism, the search for meaning through justice, and losing and finding our way.

Look first at failing and forgiving. "Hoosiers" is set in the early 1950s. Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman, comes to the remote village of Hickory, Ind., as the high school's new basketball coach. The principal, an old friend, hired him. A fellow teacher dispassionately tells him, "A man your age comes to a place like this, either he's running away from something or he has no place to go."

Actually, she is right on both counts. Dale is barred for life from coaching college basketball for hitting one of his players. But to say "Hoosiers" is a movie about basketball is like saying "Moby Dick" is a novel about a whale.

The principal's job offer, a singular act of decency, ripples out in multiple and unexpected ways: a teacher -- resigned to Hickory's isolation -- receives another chance at life. Shooter, a Hickory player 30 years ago but now an alcoholic, is offered an assistant coaching gig if he stays clean. The team's worst player, a wreck in every game, gets the opportunity to win a key game by just being himself. And, in a karmic moment at a town meeting on whether to vote Dale out as coach, the teacher who so correctly sized Dale up decides not to reveal his secret past that she dug out of library records at the county seat. She says to the unruly assemblage, "Let's give coach a chance."

What does this mean for lawyers? Clients mess up. They zig when they should zag. Bad stuff happens. Lawyers can teach their clients the value of forgiveness. Doesn't everyone deserve a second chance at the free throw line?

Yet beware the second chance we bestow on ourselves. Roll "The Verdict," in which Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, a once-prominent lawyer now reduced to pressing his business card into the hands of the bereaved at funeral homes. He stumbles onto a dream case: a young woman in a coma, a botched procedure by arrogant doctors. He goes one morning to see his client in the hospital, to snap a few photos as leverage in that afternoon's settlement conference. You hear only the hiss of the client's respirator and see only the gleam in Galvin's eyes. He thinks, "I can win this case big time, make up for my wasted life, my lost opportunities." He rejects a good offer.

In closing arguments, Galvin ostensibly talks about the case, but he is really talking about himself: "So much of the time, we are just lost. We say, 'Please, God, tell us what is right, what is true ... after a time we become dead." He misuses the suit to serve his needs, not the client's. Whatever the jury decides is irrelevant. The "verdict" is a judgment upon him. He fails.

Some lawyers become Galvins. One day they are upholding their oaths as professionals, and the next they are trashing them. (Side note: The word "professional" is from the Latin, "to profess." In ancient times a doctor or an advocate "professed" in public that he placed the needs of others above his needs. Let's consider a revival.)

Why do lawyers lose their way? Because, I think, many attorneys are idealists. There is a moment, a turning point, when we actually see the disconnect between the world as we imagine it and the world as it is. We either accept the unbridgeable gap and survive, or we don't and perish.

Attorneys who need a refresher in this truth should pop in a DVD of Woody Allen's greatest, "Crimes and Misdemeanors." I watch it once a year as sort of an inoculation, like the yearly flu shot.

A married, privileged eye doctor arranges for the murder of his troublesome lover. The audience expects the police to catch him. No, that's not quite right. Allen manipulates viewers into thinking the doctor will be caught. The signs are all there: As if in a trance, the doctor blurts out a cryptic confession to his family. He returns to the place of the murder. The police interview him. Surely, the audience comes to believe, the wheel of justice will turn. But the joke is on the viewers. The doctor's conscience proves negotiable. Proportionality between crime and punishment is never achieved.

At film's end, the doctor meets a stranger at a wedding. He tells him obliquely of a man who did wrong: Yes, at first the man was troubled, but now he is in fine fettle. The terrible act is no more real to him than a plot in a novel he read years ago. The doctor tells the man that, without rationalizations for what we do, we could not function. The doctor walks off, arm-in-arm with his adoring and none-the-wiser wife.

If movies teach us about this disconnect, can they also teach us about managing it? Watch "Paths of Glory," Stanley Kubrick, 1957. It is World War I. A company of French soldiers fails in their assault on the Ant Hill, a fortified German position. Their mission was impossible. Three soldiers are randomly chosen to serve as examples and face courts martial.

Kirk Douglas plays Major Dax, a combat officer in war, a lawyer in peace. He defends them, but the result is predetermined. "There are times I am ashamed to be a member of the human race and this is one such occasion," Dax thunders at the court martial board and begs for mercy. None is forthcoming. He tries everything but fails. He can't save the soldiers. Knowing he will lose, he lawyers on.

Galvin and Dax -- one a hard-eyed idealist, the other a starry-eyed one. One's idealism ruins him, the other's elevates him. One's core holds, the other's crumbles. If lawyers once lose their core, can they ever find it again? Sure they can. My all-time favorite movie illuminating this pervasive truth: "Wall Street."

Lowly stockbroker Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen, lusts to become his idol, corporate raider Gordon Gekko. He gets a meeting with Gekko, who sucks in the willing Fox. Fox's downward spiral begins when he blabs insider information to Gekko. Fox then justifies that wrong by committing another and yet another. Everything unravels. Gekko betrays Fox, who then turns on Gekko and gets wired by the feds.

He and Gekko meet in Central Park. It starts to rain, the sky soon to rumble. Gekko smacks him in the mouth. Fox collapses, bleeding. Gekko throws him a handkerchief from his $1,000 suit. Fox staggers up. It is riveting:

Gekko: "I gave you Darien [Fox's girlfriend and Gekko's former lover]. I gave you your manhood! I gave you everything! You could have been one of the great ones, Buddy. I looked at you, and I saw myself. Why?"

Fox: "I don't know. I guess I realized I am just Bud Fox. As much as I wanted to be Gordon Gekko, I'll always be Bud Fox."

Fox was lost but now is found. But being found is not easy. Driving to the federal courthouse, Fox tells his father, "Let's face it, dad, I'm going to jail." Fox doesn't blink at the truth. He doesn't seek rationalizations or offer equivocations. He accepts the truth.

These movies tell hard truths. Justice is seldom done. The bad prevail, the good suffer. Authority betrays us. Greed and envy rule our lives. In my heart, I know all this.

Yet, in my heart, I know this as well: For every hard truth, there is a saving grace -- the redemptive force of second chances, the nobility of fighting for what's right, rediscovering our true colors and the beauty that karma brings.

"Hard Truths, Saving Graces" -- now, there's a movie idea if I ever saw one. Lights! Camera! Action!

Michael P. Maslanka is the managing partner of Ford & Harrison's Dallas office. His e-mail address is mmaslanka@fordharrison.com. He is board certified in labor and employment law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and he writes the Texas Employment Law Letter. He is on twitter at www.twitter.com/worklawyer. His "Work Matters" blog and podcasts can be found at www.texaslawyer.com.