Serving coffee and legal advice with empathy, The Law Cafe brews a refreshing direction outside the courtroom.
Accepting clients in a comfortable setting such as a cafe, characters in the drama paint themselves as passionate practitioners of law. While it exudes freshness and autonomy, The Law Cafe also points out the role of large corporations in seemingly simple cases.
Opening Week Rating:
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The Law Cafe Opening Week Story
“A really competent lawyer resolves the problem before going to court.”
Beginning with a case against a large company, Kim Yu-ri (Lee Se Young) stands out in court with her hot-blooded attitude and loud outfit.
She is reprimanded for talking ahead of her assigned time, but she continues to speak about the deep-rooted problem in the factory. Accompanying her claims, she submits evidence on the business agreement of who’s in authority.
In the interview point-of-view portion, Yu-ri introduces herself as a righteous lawyer that represents the underprivileged and is mainly involved in public interest litigation.
For her resignation from Hwang & Goo, her boss throws her a celebration party and drags her to meet an assemblyman. However, she refuses their offer and reveals her plans of opening a law cafe that both offers legal advice and coffee.
In her search for a location, the realtor brings her to a place that used to be a tarot cafe. Without second thoughts about it, Yu-ri proceeds to take it.
Attending her childhood friends’ wedding, Yu-ri comments on how Jin-gi, the groom, was too emotional even though she too was bawling her eyes.
Ending her speech, Yu-ri chases Jung-ho (Lee Seung Gi) who was also part of their friendship circle.
Cut into Jung-ho’s life, he is now a web novel writer and a landlord who is often mistaken as jobless. He often eats and plays with his tenants, which he compares to a kitty party group.
Seeing Yu-ri on her way out of his building, they bicker in the realtor’s office. Jung-ho is eager to cancel their deal, but Yu-ri argues he cannot cancel it with her deposit.
Unfazed with Yu-ri, Jung-ho tells his willingness to pay double the amount of the contract just to call off the deal.
“Thinking about it for a long time doesn’t make it a good plan.”
Discouraging Yu-ri of her plans to become his tenant, Jung-ho questions her ability to run a cafe. Also, thinking they naturally grew apart, Yu-ri realizes how Jung-ho appears to be avoiding her.
In a flashback of their past since high school, Jung-ho and Yu-ri begin to date in college, but later break up initiated by Jung-ho.
Ranting to Se-yeon, Yu-ri feels hurt for Jung-ho avoiding her and showing general dislike toward her. Jung-ho calls Jin-gi, but Jin-gi is too focused on Se-yeon.
Persistent on her plans, Yu-ri sues Jung-ho, but he tells her she cannot do that as their case falls under an article in the civil code.
Visiting the factory, Yu-ri tries to persuade the workers by sharing that death in workplaces is not as common in other countries.
Justifying her business model in the interview, Yu-ri compares it with clients visiting a psychologist or a fortune teller. She traces it back to her deceased father’s case before and concludes how cases could have been solved before the actual trial.
For her current trial, Yu-ri calls Jung-ho to bring the affidavit she left at his house. Jung-ho bumps into his past colleagues in court, and wittingly responds to the provocations thrown at him.
Convincing the chief to stand as a witness in court, Yu-ri exposes how the company was not adhering to workplace safety guidelines and emphasizes the unfavorable position of a secondary subcontractor.
After succeeding in making Jung-ho watch her trial, Yu-ri promises to lie low as a tenant and proposes to set rules.
Preparing a long contract, Yu-ri blows up reading it. Explaining his side in the documentary, Jung-ho attributes his actions to him liking her.
“Those who are alive are scarier than those who are dead.”
Sharing his story, Jung-ho remembers how Yu-ri became his friend after having no friends in the past because of his arrogance.
He feels comfortable with just having a longtime crush, and states it was okay as long he doesn’t meet her. Snapping out of his imagination, Jung-ho hears Yu-ri agreeing to his absurd contract.
But his meddling with her recruitment of a law student on a break and an ex-convict, made her explode at the landlord who still pesters her on the viability of their agreement.
At night, Yu-ri hears a banging noise in her cafe. Recalling the realtor’s ghost story on that building, she rushes to the clinic in the building just to hear that the place above her is empty.
Turning off the lights, Yu-ri panics as a man with a hammer enters the cafe. Jung-ho comes to save her, but she then stops the two as she realizes it was the clinic’s recent client who wants to be her legal services for a noise complaint.
Worrying about Jung-ho, she searches for a needle from Jung-ho’s cabinet. However, Jung-ho pushes its doors back as it holds organized information on a case.
Locking Yu-ri in between his arms, Yu-ri mistakes it for something else and rushes out to meet Jin-gi whom she asks how to make porridge. Tasting the porridge she left on his door, Jung-ho comments how bad it tasted.
“You’d be angry at the world when you experience a misfortune, but it’s important to remember exactly what you’re angry about.”
Apologizing for his client the recent night, Dr. Park offers to accompany Yu-ri on her visit to the client’s apartment with a device for noise detection. Jung-ho meddles in her plans with the doctor, and the ladies spectate their argument in the cafe.
Always hanging out together, Jung-ho reveals to Yu-ri that Dr. Park is his cousin, and he joins them in their visit to the apartment.
Yu-ri proposes on writing a legal report on the noise issue of the client, but Jung-ho later comments on the flaws of her plans. The following day, Yu-ri hears from the residents of the same apartment that the source of the noise cannot be found.
Keen to delve deeper, Yu-ri discovers that Dohan Construction handled the building, and may have not complied with the standards remembering her deceased father’s trial.
Yu-ri calls Jung-ho over to hear the noise above her cafe, and informs him of suing Dohan Construction for her client’s noise issue. However, Jung-ho reminds her not to involve her personal feelings in her father’s case.
Jung-ho recalls the words of Yu-ri on misdirecting anger, and reveals that he was wrong for believing that his prosecutor father was simply following protocols.
He remembers feeling disheartened realizing his father is the Dohan family’s son-in-law despite claiming to have cut ties.
At the hotel, Lee Pyun Woong seeks Mr. Hwang to find grounds for suing an author of a web novel. However, nothing can be done about it since suing could prove that there is truth to the fiction written in the novel.
Feeling helpless in his case, Yu-ri’s client attempts to end his life, but Jung-ho stops him from doing so by using Yu-ri’s words on misdirecting anger.
The Law Cafe Opening Week Musings
There’s a lot to admire with the lines the characters have said in the first two episodes. It highlights how each character thinks and gives a lot of emphasis on the existing justice system at present.
Moreover, Jung-ho’s lifestyle and Yu-ri’s business model can be appealing to some because of their refreshing nature. With the abundance of legal dramas at present, those points make The Law Cafe stand out.
Lee Seung Gi’s great acting skills together with other members of the cast can be appreciated especially during their high school days.
Jung-ho and Yu-ri’s relationship has been drawn clearly, and it answers right away what happened to them in the past. For reasons such as Jung-ho’s father being involved in the case of Yu-ri’s deceased father, Jung-ho must have been holding back from getting too close to Yu-ri.
While they have been separated after being close and intimate in the past, there is also enough time to rebuild and strengthen their pairing in the next episodes. A seemingly long battle against a giant corporation can also be looked forward to in this series.
Watch new episodes of The Law Cafe every Monday and Tuesday on Viu.
Photos: KBS2
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