Reading time: five minutes

John Wick – arguably the best action movie series of recent times, but, did you know that there are points that aspiring lawyers can take away from it? Just not the over-the-top violence, obviously!

Overview of the ‘Wick-verse’

The world of John Wick revolves around an underground community of assassins who operate alongside the regular civilian world with their own rules and codes of conduct.

The community is governed by an authority, the High Table, and its agents, along with the global Continental Hotel network which serves as neutral territory and provides services to the assassin community.

The movies explore the idea of a strict honour code that governs the actions of assassins, as well as the price to pay for breaching this code which can include ex-communication from the community and being hunted by its members. They also explore the value of relationships between members, their transactional nature and the balancing of self-interest and the interest of the society that these assassins inhabit.

Overall, it’s a dangerous world where violence and death are part of life, at least it is for those who choose to partake in said society.

Cheery, huh!

What can we take away?

“The Commerce of Relationships” (taken from John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum).  

This phrase generally refers to the idea that relationships, personal or professional, are characterised by an exchange of goods, services or other form of value where each party seeks to derive some benefit from the other. The movie describes it as a “social contract in which parties agree to partake”.

In a business context, this might look like companies exchanging goods and services, favours or persons building a network of contacts that can help their career. In a personal context, this could be the exchange of companionship, emotional support or other forms of mutual aid.

On the one hand, this concept can be seen as a way to build strong, mutually beneficial relationships based on trust and reciprocity. But on the other hand, it can also be seen to exploit others for personal or professional gain or as a cold, analytical and transactional approach to relationships, lacking in genuine human connection.

In the world of Wick, this idea is represented by the gold coins and the ‘markers’.

The gold coins are used as currency in the assassin community to pay for lodgings, favours, medical care and much more. You can think of these as proof of your good character because you have to earn one before you use one.

For us, an equivalent could be positive client reviews for the work we do. The more we have, the greater the level of trust and influence we have for ourselves and our firm. It can also mean bringing in more work if we’re seen to be trusted by clients and members of the community who recommend us to others.

Markers represent a binding obligation, or an unbreakable promise, between parties – like an ‘I owe you’ or IOU but much stricter. In this case,  the penalty for not honouring one is severe, as we saw when Wick had his home destroyed due to his refusal to honour one.

We can think of these like undertakings – a specific and binding promise that you’ll do something or act in a certain way, where the penalty for not doing so might be a claim for professional misconduct.

“Rules. Without them, we live with the animals”

Every assassin lives by the strict code of rules; the laws that govern the world of Wick. The main rules we see in the movies are:

• no ‘conducting business’ on the Continental Hotel grounds; and
• honouring every ‘marker’.

This is similar to how we operate in the legal profession. There are strict rules that we must follow, particularly when it comes to things like dishonesty, money laundering and handling client money. Many firms and lawyers have been before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) for money and dishonesty-related offences, where for some the penalty is a striking off (similar to how Wick was excommunicated). It’s from these instances that we learn it’s in our best interests that we don’t fall foul of these rules.

Why does this matter?

Relationships in the world of Wick are often portrayed as transactional with each assassin seeking to gain something from the other. When you look closer at their world, you’ll realise that they are businesspeople just like lawyers. The goodwill they build in relationships matters hugely because otherwise the assassins’ ‘economy’ would stagnate and no one would be able to work, eat and have a roof over their head or pay for goods, services and favours.

The same goes for us. For example, relationships based on trust and reciprocity can give us:

• further friendships;
• further opportunities for greater exposure;
• exchange of work to continue those good relationships and keep us all topped up with work; and
• chances to build trust and reputation and become industry experts.

Lawyers are businesspeople and salespeople and we must understand that business relationships tend to be transactional because that’s how we bring work in for ourselves and our firms, and that’s how we get paid and can put food on our tables.

While we may find genuine friendships in the profession, and I’m blessed to have a select few, there’s still the need to balance our own professional self-interest and the demands of the profession we inhabit with the desire for genuine friendships and human connections in a historically transactional and stressful profession that’s still catching up when it comes to valuing genuine human interpersonal relationships.

So now that you’ve read this blog post, you might think that this article is more of a “how not to do human relationships” article and you might be right. But regardless, seeing these transactional relationships in action is a way for us young lawyers to learn about how valuable they are from a business perspective while also being entertained by a fun movie series.