I just recently completed viewing this Korean drama series from 2005. This is an endeavor I honestly try not to take very often because of the significant amount of time it takes to get through as well as the emotional investment it requires. Although I haven’t seen the amount of dramas I would like to, my experiences with the handful of ones I have seen have left me mostly disappointed. In between greats like Phoenix, Attic Cat, and Ruler of Your Own World, I’ve suffered through quite a few throwaways, many of which are mirror images of series like Lawyers. The unfortunate thing is that although they all usually have great casts, decent production, and somewhat interesting characters, they normally run out of gas story-wise near the last few episodes and rarely provide you with the payoff you expect. Lawyers is the perfect model of such a series.

Starring the hopelessly cute Jeong Hye-young (Phoenix), Kim Seong-su (Full House), and Hong Sang-soo favorite Kim Sang-kyung (Tale of Cinema, Turning Gate), Lawyers is yet another sob story of love lost, the essential theme of all Korean dramas. Here Jeong and Kim Seong-su play a young couple in love on their way to a perfect life together. He’s on the verge of completing his law degree, and she’s an aspiring violinist. Then one night her parents are killed in a car crash, coincidentally the byproduct of a mobster trying to run over a couple of thorns in his side walking down the street. The young lawyer gets involved in the investigation and due to a serious lack of common sense he ends up joining their side and dumping the love of his life. The plot is usually farfetched, but that’s part of the “charm.” If you can get by the lack of reasonable decision making present in this genre, you can find a lot of things to love about Korean dramas. Lawyers was an overall enjoyable series, and I constantly found myself watching more than one episode at a time, but when it came time to bring it all to a close and come to a meaningful conclusion it fell completely flat. “I went through all of that, for THAT?!“ is what I believe I said after the last episode. It all comes to a forced, ill-conceived shell of a melodramatic ending which could have all been avoided if just one single person had the wits to simply dial 911. I mean, they are lawyers. They should know when an emergency is at hand, right? I don’t want to give anything away, but if anyone out there has seen it or intends on seeing it I think you will look at it my way. It’s so good at some parts that I actually want to encourage everyone, but taking everything into consideration Lawyers doesn’t warrant your time, energy, or money. Let’s hope Jeong Hye-young shows up soon in something better.

Conclusion: Download if you’re interested, but pass on a buy.