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3 Best TV Shows for Lawyers

By Jonathan R. Tung, Esq. on March 16, 2016 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Television loves lawyers. And lawyers love to watch other lawyers. At FindLaw, HTGAWM and Better Call Saul are mentioned frequently over cups of gourmet coffee.

For those of you who've been too busy to keep up with the latest on your television (or device), here are few quick and dirty summaries of our favorite television attorneys.

1. How to Get Away With Murder

How to Get Away With Murder, or HTGAWM, premiered on ABC in 2014 and follows Annalise Keating, a criminal defense attorney and law professor at a prominent Philadelphia university. She hires a handful of students to intern at her firm and to work underneath an associate attorney.

The first season introduces two murder victims: Keating's husband, Sam; and his mistress, Lila. The final episodes of the latest season cover how Keating discovers her interns' involvement in her husband's murder and how she helps fabricate a cover-up to implicate her murdered husband in Lila's death. In our weekly updates of HTGAWM, we closely examine the creative license the show takes in terms of practicing law.

2. The Good Wife

The Good Wife is a CBS political drama that first premiered in late 2009. The show was inspired, according to its creators, by high profile and prominent sex scandals that hit the American political landscape, including Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, and most recently, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The show follows the struggles and of Alicia Florrick, a stay-at-home mother who returns to private practice of law following the revelation of her State Attorney husband's sex scandal and involvement in a political corruption scheme. Florrick returns to her old job as a litigator in order to distance herself from her husband and to provide for her children.

The show is currently in its seventh season.

3. Better Call Saul

Comedy meets tragedy in Better Call Saul, the spin-off from Breaking Bad that chronicles the beginnings of smooth-talking, lawyer-meets-used-car-salesman, Saul Goodman. The show is somewhat reminiscent of the notion that a series of defeats can turn the most steadfastly optimistic and hopeful individual into a criminal. Last season ended with the revelation that McGill's own brother (he had not donned the persona of Saul Goodman quite yet) had secretly stymied his younger brother's professional advancement as a lawyer.

In fact, this realization was so crushing that closing scenes suggested that McGill even turned away an opportunity at a prominent law firm. Beginning scenes of season 2 show a rekindling romantic relationship between McGill and fellow attorney Kim Wexler -- arguable the show's brightest and most hopeful light.

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