Review of Law and the City / 서초동

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I’ve been really catching up on my television shows during this time, as I feel like I would actually go insane if I wasn’t doing something besides applying to jobs, freelancing, and working on the blog. I came to realize during this time that if I didn’t have something dedicated to do and a purpose, I would actually go insane in a way that isn’t productive. I need to have a purpose, and working has been a way to find that.

Korean dramas have always been my way to unwind after a long day. They’re a bit of a comfort to me ever since I studied abroad and lived in Korea twice, and my brain doesn’t have to focus so hard because I know enough Korean that I don’t entirely have to read the subtitles if I don’t need to.

Ever since I got a Viki subscription, I’ve been watching so many more dramas, hence the influx of reviews on my blog (and I’m finally catching up on my backlog of old dramas I watched years prior, which was an interesting time to revisit them). I’ve also been keeping up with the new shows, including Law and the City.

I watched this week by week, although I was late with the final week because I was traveling in New York City. And I have to say: this drama grew on me after a while.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to keep rambling in the introduction.

The story of a group of lawyers, the cases they take on, and the lunches they share together.

If you’re someone who is into the legality of certain cases and less of the personal lives of these characters, I think this might be the show for you! We do get a decent amount of screen time to learn more about the characters, especially the leads, but I feel like sometimes the focus and emphasis on the cases they were taking did detract from what we could learn about them as people.

Anyways: the premise of this drama is about the male lead, An Ju-hyeong, and how he’s one of the best lawyers in the game right now. We learn more about why and how he became a lawyer a little later in the series, but he does have a tendency to not realize how lawyers can change the world in big and small ways.

He also doesn’t have his own practice, which is interesting because of how good he is at his job. We meet him and the others during their lunch and dinner sessions, which is a common thread throughout the course of the series. The other lawyers we get to know a bit more throughout the series’ twelve episodes, and I would say we get enough time to learn about them and who they are as people.

Enter: Kang Hui Ji. She’s also very competent as a lawyer, and is a junior associate at the firm she works at. She’s quite the social person, and when she gets involved with the group of the other lawyers and begins joining them for their lunch sessions, we see how she is connected to Ju-hyeong.

While this show does an excellent job of showing the cases, it’s not too flashy about what exactly the law field is. Some of the cases are big, others not so much. Sometimes you become more invested and connected with who you’re representing, other times you don’t agree with what they did to land them in court.

There are no big arguments or sweeping debates in the court room, and when we exit it, I would describe the events the characters go through as a bit of slice of life. Each of the leads, as well as the other side characters, have their own unique struggles depicted throughout the show—and they’re all quite different.

But when they come together for a meal, they can unwind for a little bit and forget about their jobs. That proves sometimes all you need is good company to relax.

Overall Thoughts

I could really see how someone is into this drama a lot, but for me personally, I thought it was just okay. The themes that emerge in it are important, and I did care for some of the characters and their plight, but there simply wasn’t enough besides my own determination to keep me watching. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mind frame when watching this honestly.

I will have to say those food scenes made me crave certain Korean foods. I went on a trip to New York for work towards the end of watching this, hence why my review is a little later than the finale, but I went all the way to Flushing just to eat sogogi gukbap at this new restaurant I’ve been meaning to check out.

All of this is to say: if you’re interested in this show, definitely give it a chance. You might love it more than I did, which is fine at the end of the day. I do think this is a solid show, but it’s not for me in the end.

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