Top 10 legal TV shows
Our “Top 10” segment covers a variety of topics of interest to aspiring solicitors. This time it’s a roundup of our trainee team’s picks of the Top 10 legal TV shows.
1. Suits
Set at a fictional New York City law firm, it follows Mike Ross who uses his photographic memory to talk his way into a job as an associate working for successful lawyer Harvey Specter despite being a college dropout who never attended law school.
2. Silk
Follows the daily doings of barristers of Shoe Lane Chambers in their personal and professional lives.
3. The Good Wife
Set in Chicago, the series focuses on Alicia Florrick whose husband has been jailed following a notorious political corruption and scandal. Having spent the previous 13 years as a stay-at-home mother, Alicia returns to the workforce as a litigator to provide for her two children.
4. Law & Order
This stalwart of a show is set and filmed in New York City, and follows a two-part approach: the first half is the investigation of a crime and apprehension of a suspect; the second half is the prosecution of the defendant.
5. American Crime Story
A drama series that examines infamous historical American crimes such as The People vs OJ Simpson and The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
6. Marvel’s Daredevil
Lawyer-by-day Matt Murdock uses his heightened senses from being blinded as a young boy to fight crime at night on the streets of New York City’s Hell Kitchen neighbourhood as Daredevil while uncovering a conspiracy of the criminal underworld being led by Wilson Fisk.
7. The Lincoln Lawyer
Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, runs his law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.
8. When They See Us
Based on events of the 1989 Central Park jogger case, it explores the lives and families of the five Black and Latino male suspects who were falsely accused and then prosecuted on charges related to the rape and assault of a white woman in Central Park, New York City.
9. Judge Judy
An American arbitration-based reality court show presided over by former Manhattan Family Court Judge Judith Sheindlin.
10. Kavanagh QC
James Kavanagh QC (Queen’s Counsel) is one of the topflight barristers in Britain. Each episode has him handling challenging cases and defendants which put his skills to the test regularly.
