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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Lee Jong-suk, Moon Ga-young
Latest Nielsen rating: 5.12 per cent
Not seen in a leading role since Big Mouth in 2022, Lee Jong-suk once again plays a lawyer in Law and the City, this time opposite Moon Ga-young (True Beauty).
Unlike the larger-than-life excess of his previous show, Lee’s latest is a slice-of-life legal drama about young lawyers balancing a demanding profession with, hopefully, a rewarding personal one.


The show’s English title, which references the classic HBO series Sex and the City, hints at this more laid-back narrative style, while the Korean title is simply “Seocho-dong” – the name of a district within Gangnam that, as the show’s opening narration helpfully explains, has “more law firms than restaurants”.
Lee is Ahn Ju-hyeong, a lawyer in Secho who has spent nine years working for the same small law firm. His entire social life revolves around a “lunch group” he has formed with three other lawyers working for different firms in the same building.
These are the chatty Cho Chang-won (Kang You-seok, When Life Gives You Tangerines), the penny-pinching Ha Sang-gi (Im Sung-jae, The Worst of Evil) and the upbeat Bae Mun-jeong (Ryu Hye-young, Reply 1988).
They meet for lunch every day, sometimes also for coffee and dinner, arguing over where to eat and sharing their everyday woes once they settle on somewhere. There used to be five people in the group until one of them left the building.

Enter Kang Eui-ji (Moon), a compassionate young lawyer who impresses a senior lawyer during a job interview and succeeds in landing the post previously occupied by the fifth member of the lunch group.
Eui-ji finds some handover notes at her new desk, which include information about the lunch group. That night, she joins them in the bar, turning the quartet back into a quintet.
The moment she arrives, Ju-hyeong’s beer trembles on the table during a minor earthquake, slyly signalling the emotional tremors to come.
Eui-ji reveals that this isn’t their first meeting – they encountered each other a few years earlier when they spent time in Hong Kong, though Ju-hyeong claims not to recognise her.

That same evening, the owners of the various legal practices in the building are also meeting for drinks.
At the moment of the earthquake, Kim Hyung-min (Yeom Hye-ran, Mask Girl), their landlord, suddenly appears before them with an intriguing proposition: merge all the practices in the building into a larger law group.
That is about as far as the set-up goes, as the rest of the show is devoted to Ju-hyeong and Eui-ji’s casework, particularly their contrasting styles.
Ju-hyeong appears cold and clinical, regarding clients unemotionally, while Eui-ji is deeply empathetic. Yet it does not take a long time for the show to reveal that these seemingly different personalities ultimately have fairly similar intentions.

Given the romantic-drama format that the show flirts with, this is hardly surprising, but Law and the City finds a clever way to illustrate this familiar narrative trope.
In episode two, Ju-hyeong and Eui-ji meet with clients in an eviction case. Eui-ji fails to get permission from her new boss to do a pro bono case for a man whose family is about to be evicted from their public housing, while Ju-hyeong represents the bank whose loan the man has been unable to pay back.
The day before the final day of the trial, a precedent in another case is established that enables the tenant to win and not get evicted.
Ju-hyeong knows about this but, assuming correctly that neither the man nor the judge does, he stays quiet to win the case. His plan fails when Eui-ji tells the man how to keep his family home.

Ju-hyeong and Eui-ji erupt into a judicial argument during lunch with the rest of their group. Eui-ji accuses Ju-hyeong of lacking empathy for not trying to help the man. Ju-hyeong counters that Eui-ji is naive.
He points out that while the precedent may seem to help disadvantaged tenants, in reality it will lead to banks no longer giving out loans for low-income housing. It’s not that he lacks empathy; it’s that he can see the big picture.
Then again, the real bone that Eui-ji has to pick with Ju-hyeong is his stubborn insistence that they do not know each other. It’s hard not to understand her frustration when we discover that they kissed in Hong Kong.
Whether Law and the City can maintain the ideological tit-for-tat engagement while the romantic part of the show builds up remains to be seen, but this slice-of-life legal drama has got off on the right foot.
Law and the City is streaming on Disney+.


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This Disney+ Korean drama about young lawyers balancing a demanding profession with their personal lives gets off on the right foot


This Disney+ Korean drama about young lawyers balancing a demanding profession with their personal lives gets off on the right foot.


Disney+ K-drama Law and the City: Lee Jong-suk, Moon Ga-young in slice-of-life legal drama

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}This Disney+ Korean drama about young lawyers balancing a demanding profession with their personal lives gets off on the right foot

This Disney+ Korean drama about young lawyers balancing a demanding profession with their personal lives gets off on the right foot