You have seen (some of) them on TV, and they made you fantasize about becoming a legal representative of innocent people charged with a crime, or protecting your client’s interest in a divorce court. These are some of the best past and present legal series in the United States.

Law and Order

We will not go into the overabundance of sequels of Dick Wolf’s best work. All we will mention is that the series has everything – police investigations, grilling the suspects, moving the case to the courthouse, lamenting the lack of evidence, offering a plea bargain, discovering additional evidence and more. We often see the legal and ethical dilemmas people face daily.

Ally McBeal

Have you ever been in love? Were you a misfit as a child? Is it difficult for you to function in the real world, despite having awesome professional skills? This show just might be right up your alley.

Ally McBeal follows a heroine of the same name, who works in a law firm for two eccentric partners – John Cage, who is funny-looking and very peculiar about his habits, and Richard Fish, an insensitive, money-oriented guy who makes it difficult to relax. This is all paired with the fact that Ally has to work side-by-side with her one true love from the past, Billy, and his wife, Georgia.

The show is perfect for incurable romantics, and watching the day-by-day struggle of the title character, as well as her hallucinations and fantasies, makes us desire to once more be that innocent and naive. This is one of those classics that return to the TV screen time and time again.

JAG

Lieutenant Harmon Rabb, diagnosed with night blindness, must abandon his career as a fighter pilot, and instead uses his knowledge and skills to practice law as a Judge Advocate General, defending and prosecuting military personnel involved in criminal activities.

The stories move from the courtroom to the field and vice versa, as the Lieutenant and his associates not only fight in court, but also work hard to uncover the truth, whatever it may be. There is a strong undertone of apple-pie patriotism, so the freedom-loving viewers will certainly get a kick out of it.

The Practice

Created and produced by David E. Kelley, the same person we have to thank for Ally McBeal, the comedy/legal drama series deals with a law firm in Boston, run by originally optimistic, but ultimately cynical Bobby Donnell, played by Dylan McDermott. Hoping to become the defender of the innocent, he is quickly disillusioned as he discovers that criminals are the ones who keep the business afloat. There is a plethora of human drama and power play involved.

Boston Legal

The Practice made way for a spinoff, and we get to enjoy Boston Legal, a TV show about Denny Crane (William Shatner) and Alan Shore (James Spader), an utterly chaotic pair, as the first is an arrogant conservative with Mad Cow Disease, and the second somehow commands more authority than senior partners in the firm, due to his slightly offensive charisma.

Similar to Ally McBeal, the firm Crane, Poole & Schmidt, takes on ridiculous cases, like when a man from Sudan wants to sue the US for taking no action against the chaos in his country. It is definitely a must-see for lovers of comedy who like to ponder the world issues.