The 10 Best Legal Drama TV Shows Of All Time, Ranked According To IMDb

The very best legal dramas are the ones that go further than the procedural nature of the genre and take some major risks.

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With so many in-depth legal dramas on TV these days, someone might feel like they’re a lawyer after simply consuming these shows.

However, some legal dramas spend less time than others on the law aspect whereas others have clearly spent months researching and working with real-life defense attorneys. There are several great legal dramas that feature a different case each week, but the very best legal dramas are the ones that go further than the procedural nature of the genre and take some major risks.

10 The Practice – 7.7

The Practice is somewhat of a first for TV, as the legal drama was created as an answer to L.A. Law, which was a show that totally romanticized the American legal system; it made it flashier and cooler than it really was.

The Practice was much more realistic and it actually treated its viewers as if they were smart. And when it came to legal proceedings, deep themes were explored; including personal morality, which was a great approach considering criminal lawyers had never really been depicted in such a light before.

9 Your Honor – 7.7

With two iconic television shows under his belt, Bryan Cranston leapt back in to the medium, as he plays a judge whose son kills a teenager in a hit-and-run. Your Honor is special because it’s one of the few law dramas that is serialized, where others tend to be procedural case-of-the-week type shows.

On top of that, Your Honor is a limited series, too, meaning there won’t be another season, but what audiences got was something special and completely different to anything in the genre, and Michael Desiato (Cranston) isn’t much better than Walter White from Breaking Bad.

8 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – 8.0

The Law & Order franchise is one of the most successful on TV, but the first spin-off of the series, Special Victims Unit, is rated higher than even the original series. Situated in a fictionalized version of the NYPD, SVU often focuses on crimes that are loosely based on real events that have gained considerable media attention.

SVU has run for a long time, as there are close to 500 episodes in the series, and it’s amazing the show has managed to remain consistent after all this time. And with the franchise getting another spin off, there are a lot of things it could borrow from Special Victims Unit.

7 Damages – 8.1

Though it was fairly short lived compared to other legal dramas, as many of them tend to have hundreds of episodes, Damages is one of the most engaging courtroom shows there has ever been.

Each major case in the show spans a whole season, so more time and effort has gone in to the research and it properly breaks down how legal proceedings go, unlike other shows that throw weeks-long proceedings in to a 40 minute episode. What also makes the show great is the fact Patty (Glenn Close) will to do anything to win a case, no matter how unethical it is.

6 How To Get Away With Murder – 8.1

As so many occupational shows take place where the main character acts as a mentor to a group of people, whether it’s medical shows like House or detective shows like Lie To Me, How To Get Away With Murder is the legal drama’s answer to those shows.

The series follows Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), a law professor and criminal defense attorney who takes five students under her wing. It’s a fascinating drama, as those very people become intertwined in their very own murder plot. The show is rated so high mostly due to Davis’ incredible portrayal of Keating, and it has some interesting crossovers with Scandal, too.

5 The Good Wife – 8.3

The Good Wife is grounded in reality almost more than any other legal show if it wasn’t for American Crime Story, which is based on real-life court cases. As the show is about a wife of a state attorney who goes back in to law when her husband is caught in the middle of a sex scandal, The Good Wife is massively influenced by real life events such as the scandal involving Bill Clinton.

The show interestingly explores the dynamic between these women who allow their careers to take a backseat to further benefit their husbands’ ambitions, even when they are caught with their pants around their ankles.

4 American Crime Story – 8.4

Being a seasonal anthology series, there isn’t much audiences know about the upcoming season, but the first two seasons of American Crime Story took the world by storm. Especially the first season, which was one big reenactment of the infamous trial of O.J. Simpson.

Though the second season wasn’t as phenomenally well received, it was still enjoyed by audiences, as it followed the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace. The third season is currently in production (though it has been halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and it’s based on yet another hot topic; it follows the impeachment of Bill Clinton and his sex scandal.

3 Boston Legal – 8.4

It’s fascinating that, more than any other show, it’s legal dramas that get so many spin-off shows. Law & Order has several spin-off shows, Breaking Bad received a legal drama spin-off in the form of Better Call Saul, and of course, the great Boston Legal is a spin-off of The Practice. It’s one of the rare times in which a spin-off is better than the original.

Boston Legal is slightly different than The Practice, as it’s known to break the fourth wall a lot more, but there’s just as much law mumbo-jumbo for any fan of procedural courtroom dramas to love.

2 Suits – 8.5

Suits is most interesting because it looks more at the inner workings of the law firm than it does the actual cases that the firm takes on. As the show follows Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams,) a law associate who never actually went to law school, Suits cleverly sees the character close the book on cases while maintaining his secret at the same time.

For the most part, the show is full of predictably angry, loud, and obnoxious lawyers yelling over one another with the most dense law terminology possible, and that’s exactly what makes it so entertaining.

1 Better Call Saul – 8.7

It barely comes as any surprise that Better Call Saul is the highest rated legal drama of them all. Being a descendent of Breaking Bad and taking place before the events of that show, Better Call Saul expands on the criminal underbelly of Albuquerque in ways that weren’t even imaginable. From going in to greater detail about Madrigal to showing how Gustavo Fring built his meth empire, it goes in to great depth about organized crime in the city.

But what the show does better than anything is its elements of courtroom drama. From multi-episode arcs about money scandals to the explosive courtroom battle between Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Chuck (Michael McKean), the law aspect of the show is why some seasons even rank higher than Breaking Bad.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/best-legal-dramas-imdb/