Making a Murderer — Can it improve your legal English language skills?

Many of our teachers were glued to the television when the documentary ‘Making a Murderer’ screened on Netflix. The programme is similar to the hugely successful podcast ‘Serial’ and the HBO/Sky Atlantic documentary ‘The Jinx’ as it seeks to analyse a criminal case that the producers believe led to a wrongful conviction (or in ‘The Jinx’ — no conviction at all as at time of writing). There are suggestions that the police have ‘planted’ evidence on the subject of the documentary.

While all of these shows hail from the United States, there is much that a lawyer or law student from outside the states can gain from them. The court process is similar to ours in the UK and the process of police investigation and criminal justice are close to how we work in the UK. However, one of the key differences is with the public defender system.

Defending the poor

In the UK, anyone suspected of a crime and who does not have the means to pay will be able to rely on criminal legal aid. This means that a solicitor or representative from a local law firm will be on hand to advise you and defend you in court if need be. In the US, people without the means to pay have the right to use a public defender.

A public defender is appointed to defend one of the suspects in Making a Murderer. The crime he is accused of is a particularly violent act of murder and we will not go into the details now. His lawyer appears to be (to put it diplomatically) incapable of defending a crime of this seriousness and his decisions are questioned frequently in the documentary. For more on the public defender system, watch this YouTube video.

While we have all seen the reports from the US of police officers targeting African Americans, another notable difference here is that the subject is white and poor rather than black and poor. As he belongs to a lower class family, one might speculate that the police considered him an easy target.

Is it all bad?

Viewers of the documentary will be disheartened and disapproving of the American criminal justice system, but there are some positives in the documentary. The two lawyers for the primary suspect Steven Avery are a credit to the legal profession and, in the words of one journalist, ‘are brilliant, compassionate and fiercely competent.’ As you watch these two gentlemen investigate the crime and the prosecution case, perhaps you will feel that American criminal justice is not broken yet.

To learn more about the language of law and criminal law in the United Kingdom and the United States, contact Legal English Language Training on 020 3566 0145 or by email

Originally published at www.legalenglish.co.uk.