Atticus Finch Atticus Finch Atticus Finch is a fictional character in Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1960, "To Kill a Mockingbird". A preliminary version of the character also appears in the novel "Go Set a Watchman", written in the mid 1950s but not published until 2015. Atticus is a lawyer and resident of the fictional Maycomb County, Alabama, and the father of Jeremy "Jem" Finch and Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. Lee based the character on her own father, Amasa Coleman Lee, an Alabama lawyer, who, like Atticus, represented black defendants in a highly publicized criminal trial. "Book Magazine"s list of "The
Atticus Finch public perception of the legal profession", before questioning whether "Atticus Finch is a paragon of honor or an especially slick hired gun." In 1992 Monroe Freedman, a professor of law and noted legal ethicist, published two articles in the national legal newspaper "Legal Times" calling for the legal profession to set aside Atticus Finch as a role model. Freedman argued that Atticus still worked within a system of institutionalized racism and sexism and should not be revered. Freedman's article sparked a flurry of responses from attorneys who entered the profession holding Atticus Finch as a hero and the reason for