I always liked this scene at the Harvard Club in New York featuring Sydney Pollack and John Travolta in the 1998 film A Civil Action:

Jan Schlictmann (Travolta): Sorry I'm late, I got lost.

Al Eustis (Pollack): You got lost? How'd you manage that?

Schlictmann: Well, I've never been here before so ..

Eustis: What never been here before? What kind of Harvard man are you?

Schlictmann (a bit self-consciously): The Cornell kind.

Eustis (double-take): Cornell? I thought you went to Harvard.

Schlictmann: Um, um.

Eustis: I'm sure somebody said that. Yeah, somebody said that you went to Harvard.

Schlictmann (shaking head): Um, Um.

Schlictmann (pursing lips): Cornell. Well listen -- Cornell is a damned good school. Damned good (trailing off).*

* Damned good with faint praise. :)

When he asks what Travolta wants, Travolta starts talking about possible settlement terms.

Eustis (slightly bristling): There's an unspoken rule at the Harvard Club, Jan -- Business is never transacted here (he then relaxes). I meant what did you want to drink?

Afterwards, Schlictmann tells his partners: "I wanted to reach across and strangle him with his tie."

When talking about sailing his little yacht (not the big one) in Long Island Sound, Eustis rhapsodizes about the simple joy of no interruptions while he's out on the boat, then asks Schlictmann: "You know what I'm talking about. You sail."

Schlictmann: No, I don't.

Eustis: You don't sail?

Back at Eustis's office, Eustis urges a visibly uncomfortable, Harvard-uneducated, non-sailing Schlictmann to put his feet up on what Schlichtmann would later recount as a "spindly, antique table."

When they talk numbers, and Schlictmann turns down $8 million because he owes the families "more than that," avuncular Al gets very serious.

"What do you owe them? Do you owe them your career? Because that's what we're talking about," he said, staring intently. "Don't do it. Don't go for broke on this one. It isn't worth it to me."

Pollack died today.

The Am Law Daily blog talks about some of the other legal characters he played, but as with me, the Eustis character made an impression.