How 'Suits' Is Reviving the Legal Drama—For Better, But Mostly For Worse

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 5, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 5, 2023 |

During an investor conference yesterday, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos predicted that in the “next year you’ll probably see a bunch of lawyer shows,” thanks to the huge popularity of Suits on the streaming platform., The thing is, legal series used to be all the rage, thanks in part to the omnipresence of David E. Kelley, who gave us L.A. Law, Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal, Harry’s Law and Fyvush Finkel on Picket Fences. For a solid 15-20 years, network television was nothing but police procedurals and legal shows.

While the cop shows are still around, legal shows have largely fallen out of favor, and much of that is because perceptions have shifted: Audiences still love prosecutors (Law & Order, SVU), but attitudes about defense lawyers have soured because our culture now associates lawyers with the bad actions of their clients.

A big reason I went to law school was because of The Practice and because of those big, rousing speeches about the Constitutional right to a defense, about it being better that ten guilty people go free than one innocent person goes to prison, and because of all those wrongfully accused murderers. Steve Harris and this speech is why I went to law school:

Times have changed. We still live in a society where a defendant is legally innocent until proven guilty, but the public no longer waits around for that guilty verdict. Social media tries and convicts in a matter of hours, and there’s a reason for that, too. Americans have lost faith in the judicial system because people with money seldom face consequences, while poor people, people of color, and marginalized people too often become victims of the system. There are no trials where inspirational defense attorneys help the downtrodden innocent people dodge guilty verdicts anymore because poor people can’t afford trials. Innocent or guilty, they all settle.

The only people who go to trial are the wealthy people who can afford an expensive defense, and too often, those attorneys argue against underpaid, overworked prosecutors with few resources and judges willing to cut rich white kids a break (see, e.g., Brock Turner). The only defense attorney representation we typically see are from attorneys who represent the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Johnny Depp, Donald Trump, Aaron Hernandez, or Casey Anthony.

Atticus Finch no longer exists in the cultural representation of attorneys, and so the legal drama as we once knew it has died. But Suits has revived the genre, and it’s easy to explain why. It’s because Suits has sidestepped the Constitution and the politics of defending murderers. Suits is about a corporate law firm. It’s about wealthy lawyers who mostly defend wealthy clients against other wealthy clients. Suits is not about justice; it’s not even about what’s right or wrong. It’s about exploiting a system to enrich themselves and their clients. It was not created by a former attorney. It was created by Aaron Korsh, a former Wall Street investment banker.

So, when Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says to “expect a bunch of legal shows” from rivals, these are the kinds of legal shows he’s talking about. Yes, there may be the odd The Good Fight, a political series masquerading as a legal one, or the Lincoln Lawyer, which is largely about exploiting the legal system to offset the systemic disadvantage of Mickey Haller’s clients.

However, those aren’t the future of legal dramas. The future of legal dramas is this one, where Kim Kardashian reteams with Ryan Murphy for a Hulu series in which she “plays Los Angeles’ most successful divorce lawyer and the owner of an all-female law firm.” That’s a legal drama for these times. It will almost certainly pit women against their abusive, terrible husbands, and there is nothing wrong with that, notwithstanding the presence of Kardashian. But it also sidesteps the ugly politics of being a defense lawyer who frees a murderer because his confession was quashed because a police officer forgot to read him his Miranda rights.

We used to celebrate defense lawyers who used any means necessary to spare their clients a long prison sentence, but now? If the lawyer does that for the wrong client, then he or she is a pariah. And so, the future of legal dramas is Suits and other shows that will never take a stand for the Constitution if the Constitution stands in the way of convicting an accused rapist or murderer. The future of the legal drama is not about criminals; it’s about using the legal system to get rich.