The cast of The Practice
Image credit: ABC
The Practice is a highly acclaimed drama about a small law firm in Boston that mainly deals with criminal defence cases. It ran for eight seasons between 1997-2004, and although the last season acted as an introduction to its more lighthearted spin-off, Boston Legal, it never ceased to continue its exploration of the inner conflicts that come with the legal profession.
I used to be an avid watcher of Suits - before the huge drama about firm management and politics happened - and I’m a great fan of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing and The Newsroom. All three shows show an idealistic - and in Suits’s case, somewhat glamorous - account of the respective professional environments that they portray.
However, The Practice is just quite the opposite. I haven’t watched all the episodes yet, and I don’t plan to, but I have not encountered an episode that I didn’t find relevant or enlightening just yet. In three broad points, these are the three things I love about The Practice.
1. The lawyers are not made out to be heroes.
Pop culture glorifies the two extremes of the spectrum: the cutthroat prosecutor who sends murders to jail or the bleeding heart defender who sticks up for the innocent. In The Practice, it’s shown that lawyers wade in much murkier waters than that.
The lawyers of Donnell, Young & Frutt (the show ends with Young, Frutt & Berlutti), don’t just defend those who are wrongly accused of a crime. They also defend murderers, rapists and other people who have committed heinous crimes, and sometimes, they even win.
As a result, Bobby Donnell and his colleagues do not only have to feel the disgust coming from their fellow lawyers, but they also have to deal with being disgusted with themselves. One of my favourite episodes is when Donnell rips apart into a 13-year-old statutory rape victim during cross-examination, which results in his client, who had already admitted to having coerced the boy to pursue a sexual relationship with him, getting acquitted.
The firm’s frequent courtroom rivals - a handful of district attorneys - aren’t so squeaky clean either. Notably, rising star Assistant DA Helen Gamble, a good friend to many of the firm’s attorneys, successfully orchestrated for a man to be killed after he had assassinate her boss and mentor.
The lawyers in The Practice are not inherently terrible people, but oftentimes, they’ve had to make compromise their morals in order to get a favourable outcome on a case.
2. The issues explored are relevant even today.
The Practice aired in a world that was post-internet, but pre-social media. The lawyers didn’t have iPhones, nor have they heard of Facebook or Twitter.
For me - even if I have an awareness that social justice issues existed way before the internet - it’s still somewhat startling that manifestations of social issues as we see them today were already prevalent even at the turn of the 21st century.
I used to be an avid watcher of Suits - before the huge drama about firm management and politics happened - and I’m a great fan of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing and The Newsroom. All three shows show an idealistic - and in Suits’s case, somewhat glamorous - account of the respective professional environments that they portray.
However, The Practice is just quite the opposite. I haven’t watched all the episodes yet, and I don’t plan to, but I have not encountered an episode that I didn’t find relevant or enlightening just yet. In three broad points, these are the three things I love about The Practice.
1. The lawyers are not made out to be heroes.
Pop culture glorifies the two extremes of the spectrum: the cutthroat prosecutor who sends murders to jail or the bleeding heart defender who sticks up for the innocent. In The Practice, it’s shown that lawyers wade in much murkier waters than that.
The lawyers of Donnell, Young & Frutt (the show ends with Young, Frutt & Berlutti), don’t just defend those who are wrongly accused of a crime. They also defend murderers, rapists and other people who have committed heinous crimes, and sometimes, they even win.
As a result, Bobby Donnell and his colleagues do not only have to feel the disgust coming from their fellow lawyers, but they also have to deal with being disgusted with themselves. One of my favourite episodes is when Donnell rips apart into a 13-year-old statutory rape victim during cross-examination, which results in his client, who had already admitted to having coerced the boy to pursue a sexual relationship with him, getting acquitted.
The firm’s frequent courtroom rivals - a handful of district attorneys - aren’t so squeaky clean either. Notably, rising star Assistant DA Helen Gamble, a good friend to many of the firm’s attorneys, successfully orchestrated for a man to be killed after he had assassinate her boss and mentor.
The lawyers in The Practice are not inherently terrible people, but oftentimes, they’ve had to make compromise their morals in order to get a favourable outcome on a case.
2. The issues explored are relevant even today.
The Practice aired in a world that was post-internet, but pre-social media. The lawyers didn’t have iPhones, nor have they heard of Facebook or Twitter.
For me - even if I have an awareness that social justice issues existed way before the internet - it’s still somewhat startling that manifestations of social issues as we see them today were already prevalent even at the turn of the 21st century.
In Season 7, Jamie Stringer represents a friend from school who believed that prospective employers discriminated against her because she told them she went to a counselling programme after being raped in high school. The same season also had a case where an airline company was going to court for the right to ban Arab passengers on its flights.
A curveball is thrown in Season 8 when the firm has to defend two poor teenagers who were charged with the murder of a policeman, the only evidence being a confession which was coerced under torture. The lawyers did not only question the unethical acts of the police, but also questioned their status in society which allowed them to get away with not only shooting, but torturing an unarmed teenager.
A curveball is thrown in Season 8 when the firm has to defend two poor teenagers who were charged with the murder of a policeman, the only evidence being a confession which was coerced under torture. The lawyers did not only question the unethical acts of the police, but also questioned their status in society which allowed them to get away with not only shooting, but torturing an unarmed teenager.
The show examines the role that lawyers have in correcting injustices through the letter of the law, but doesn’t forget that a much deeper shift is needed in order to achieve a better society.
3. It’s an exhibition of good oratory.
Each episode handles between one to three cases, so there is at least one storyline that involves the courtroom. Most episodes have at least one long scene that shows closing arguments from the lawyers on both sides, and you’ve got to hand it to the actors. It’s one thing to memorise a bunch of lines, and it’s another to deliver them so well that they could pass as lawyers.
What I found particularly fascinating was that the lawyers have a lot of mannerisms that are often seen with competitive university debaters. To me, it just reaffirms that competitive debating is definitely a breeding ground for future lawyers.
Adjudicators tell you week after week that the structure and the delivery of the argument is as equally important as the content. There is a degree of emotional manipulation involved in debating, and as The Practice showed, this is also evident in the courtroom, particularly when a jury is involved.
No matter how formulaic the show can get, one can’t help but hang on the edge of their seats to see how a lawyer would deliver their closing argument. They’re that good.
That’s not to say I don’t have complaints with some of the aspects of The Practice. I don’t like the lack of proper relationships between the female characters on the show, and I definitely don’t like the focus on the angst of Bobby Donnell, an otherwise competent lawyer with a surprising lack of thick skin. My judgement of him was cemented in the episode where he locked himself in his office and sulked about his marital problems while his colleagues ran around frantically trying to negotiate with a psychopath who held one of their lawyers hostage in a hotel room wired with explosives.
That said, the treatment of particular people under the justice system is the main focus of this legal procedural. It’s the part of the show that the writers consistently did well over its eight-season run.
If you’ve got some spare time over the holidays, I recommend watching a few episodes. You won’t regret it.
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