The Spring of dramas is here! SEE THE POURING RAIN OF ENGROSSING DRAMAS and sigh with pleasant relief and contentment. Then, come watch Neighborhood Lawyer Jo Deulho for a quick hour of laughing and getting your heart squeezed. The first episode follows a naive but quick and quirky up and coming prosecutor who falls hard when he goes after a chaebol. However, his sense of justice doesn’t stay away forever and he returns when one of his own decisions may lead to an innocent man getting prosecuted for murder.
THE RECAP
Meet our zany and definitely quirky prosecutor Jo Deul-Ho. He sits in the prosecutor’s seat and takes the first attack on CEO Jung the defendant and CEO of Daewa Group who gets wheeled in. He notes that he knows Jung is going to ask for an extension due to his health condition. So, he promises to ask a few questions and let Jung go. After quietly whispering to Jung that he knows that Jung is lying, he pretends to drop a tarantula on Jung. Jung falls for it and jumps up shouting like crazy, effectively killing his argument for an extension. Deulho smiles victoriously and announces impishly that Jung has been miraculously cured.
The defending lawyer gets up and asks Jung if he wants to say anything. Jung breaks down in fake sobs and confesses that if he has done anything wrong in his life, it is giving a bribe to a prosecutor. He then points to Jung as the prosecutor whom he bribed. Next, the defending lawyer brings up pictures of Jung looking chummy with Deulho as well as screencaps of the alleged account in which Jung transferred money to Deulho.
Deulho gets up slowly and processes the situation. He walks out of the court room in a daze and runs past all of his fellow prosecutors out to arrest him on the Chief Prosecutor’s order.
Meanwhile, plot twist. The defending lawyer? It was Deulho’s ex-wife (Jang Hye Kyung).
Deulho manages to catch his father-in-law in his car as it leaves… He’s the head of the best law firm in Korea – Geum San. But daddy-in-law’s response? That he was wrong to let Deulho into the family who ended up being a liability.
Hye Kyung goes to visit Deulho in prison. She offers a deal. He gives up all custody rights over their daughter Soobin and she will let him off with one year of probation. She notes that they didn’t marry for love and didn’t match each other… He should go back to his rightful place… Deulho refuses and ends up with six months of prison, one year of probation and a financial fine.
Fast forward three years. We meet our female protagonist (Eunjo). She’s a first year associate at the law firm Geum San. She’s adorably and almost sickenly sweetly naive and bubbly – running to her first day of work in heels instead of just switching to heels in the office? Ah, must not nitpick…
Eunjo gets her first assignment from who seems like a partner. She’s supposed to find the homeless man who sold his Korean social security number for their case. Instead of giving the task to the firm’s prosecutor, she goes off to look herself.
Eunjo ends up looking among the homeless people as they are the usual folks who sell their social security numbers for richer corrupt people to create false accounts. She also runs into Deulho under a tunnel… First meeting! It ends quickly when Deulho growls at her and Eunjo runs away after putting the cardboard box back on Deulho so that he can sleep in peace.
Deulho wakes up and goes for his free meal. But then there are two other homeless guys that overheard that Deulho used to be a prosecutor. One of them (Hwang) has a case where his wife used his social security number to get a loan from a loan shark (Bae Daesoo) who is demanding an usurious amount in repayment. Deulho tries to run away from the two but they stick to him like glue.
So, Deulho goes to Daesoo. Turns out Daesoo remembers Deulho. Deulho even forces his way to a cafe with Daesoo where he asks Daesoo if it’s true that he leant $3000 and asked for $6000. Daesoo denies it so Deulho brings Hwang in.
Daesoo begins to yell at Hwang so Deulho cuts in. Deulho reminds Daesoo that he was caught for importing counterfeit products… The statute of limitations isn’t over yet… Cue Daesoo handing over the money over the legal interest rate cap. Deulho and his two beggar friends leave and Daesoo sighs to his minions that he only gave the money as allowance because he felt bad.
Deulho and his new friends end up getting stiffed at a lounge which refuses to let them in while Eunjo sees a pickpocket take the wallet of a drunkard at the subway station. They all cross paths when the pickpocket runs through Deulho’s tunnel and knocks over Soobin’s picture which Deulho had been talking to…
MY TWO CENTS
First the basics:
Name: Neighborhood Lawyer Jo Deulho a/k/a My Lawyer Mr. Jo
Episodes: 20
Airs: Mondays & Tuesdays
Now, on to my ramblings. As a background I want to first convey the general wisdom of the Korean legal-sphere. In Korea until the past year (or so), legal jobs were decided by a special governmental exam. You usually major in law in undergraduate school and then take the exam. I have been told that only like 15% passed each year. Then you go study for 2 years at yeonsuwon where your grades determine your job. Depending on your grades, you either became a judge, a prosecutor or a lawyer. Gross simplification top 5% are offered the option to become judges, the next 5% are offered the option to become prosecutors and the rest become lawyers at a commercial law firm. [Note, this has changed recently (like last five years) because Korea has decided to get rid of its national exam system and institute graduate law schools. But that change was literally within the last 3ish? years.] Originally, it had been more prestigious to become a judge or prosecutor first. However, in the recent decades, more people even though they scored in the top 5% opted to go to the top law firms for the better pay. Additionally, there is a revolving door as some judges retire into law firms…So, you get this interesting scenario where the younger judge is presiding over a case being litigated by two of his sunbaes at different law firms. Anyways, the fight for law firms for retiring judges to join their litigation practices is a topic for another rambling day…Today, we return to Deulho!
So, presumably Deulho is one of the best and brightest of the brightest. He would have passed an exam that only like 15% pass and then graduated in the top 10% of his class at yeonsuwon. He was also special enough that the Chief Prosecutor decided to take him under his wing… It was interesting to see how the bright eyed and bushy tailed junior prosecutor Deulho try his best to entertain the great and important CEO Jung. (Not to mention Hye Kyung’s accusation that Deulho didn’t marry her (the daughter of the head of Geum San) out of love….) You see how he feels uncomfortable when he finds out that his friend Ilkook is on the hook for a crime that Jung junior committed. Yet, he doesn’t try to go after Jung junior. He offers to make it go away, if it means that he can protect his friend…
Somewhere along the way, his conscious came back with a vengeance…which leads us to the first scene where he’s directly attacking CEO Jung and it all backfires on him. The background that we learned in the rest of the episode really made Deulho human for me. If he had began guns blazing, I would have been skeptical. But, you see him try to curry favor and climb the ladder before he turns to be the knight of legal justice… Also, it was horrible to see the whole prosecutorial institution turn on Deulho but it made sense that a young and cocky prosecutor can’t fix everything easily. Plus, it gives us a reason to watch the rest of the series.
Once, we leave Deulho…The storyline takes a lot more artistic license and is less OMG I LOVE IT RIGHT AWAY. For example, Eunjo is supposed to be Deulho’s future love interest as well as his mirror…She’s still bright eyed and bushy tailed. She may even be more naive than Deulho because she still believes that she (as a corporate attorney) is there to make a difference for the little guys. I love the premise of her character but something about her made the character lack the final 2%… Is it the fact that she runs in heels instead of keeping heels at work? Is it the fact that she seems way too dolled up all the time when first years that the number one firm would usually spend their first year working until 2 to 3 AM? Not sure…Something about her character was too storybook Candy for me to fall in love as much as I loved the fallen Deulho.
However, all in all? LOVED the first two episodes. In fact, I can tell you episode 2 cinched it for me and I will be recapping this series. A lot of veterans appear in this drama… Ryu Soo Young, Kim Gab Soo, Jung Won Joong, Jung Kyu Soo… And, Park Shin Yang. Do I have to say more? Park Shin Yang completely carried the first episode as the dorky overzealous nerd! Kang Sora’s character might have been slightly annoying but her acting was solid as well. I look forward to really getting to know these characters more.
(CC BY-NC-ND) DRAMAFEED 2016.
MY LAWYER MR. JO RECAP by DRAMAFEED | Copy & Paste Guidelines – Always put a link back to the source.
