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I once read about a person who, tired of the stresses and strains of their busy professional life, recreated their teenage bedroom. Complete with posters of childhood pop idols on the walls, bedclothes of the era, a record player to play the music they had loved, a wardrobe packed with terrible clothes once deemed cool and diaries full of cringeworthy teenage angst, they would go into that room after work each day to immerse themselves in their teen life, for hours.
The experiment refreshed them enormously. After a period, friends began to comment on how much younger and at peace they looked.
I can’t promise that watching legal shows from our younger years will will shave ten years off your face, but it can be a happy place for many of us to inhabit again. It harks back to what we fondly imagine were simpler times, better times, happier times. Whether they were or not is a moot point. To quote Sheryl Crowe: ‘If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.’
The choice of classic legal TV shows is huge, depending on your range of channels or subscription packages. They range from Perry Mason, Rumpole of the Bailey and Crown Court to LA Law, Kavanagh QC, Silk and many more.
When Counsel magazine asked me to step back in time, I instinctively returned to the 1990s. It was a glorious decade. In Britain George Michael and David Bowie were still alive and across the Atlantic so were Prince, Chris Cornell and Jeff Buckley. Friends and Frasier were must-watch Friday night television. People disagreed with each other but still ended with a handshake.
And letters. We had letters! We bought beautiful writing pads and nice pens, sat down and really thought about what we wanted to say, instead of just firing off a quick email. We agonised over every word. If it was a love letter, we wondered how it would be received. Were we getting across our feelings? Were we coming on too strong? Should we post it, should we not? And then when we did, we wanted to crawl inside the letterbox and pull it out to re-write it.
We spoke to people on landlines. If we were desperate to hear from someone, we would wait in and sit by the telephone. We knew the agony of Dorothy Parker’s ‘A Telephone Call’.
And there was an American TV lawyer called Ally McBeal.
The series started in 1997 and aired until 2002. It was set in a Boston law firm, Cage and Fish, although its focus was largely the personal lives of the main characters. Calista Flockhart, in the title role, was a quirky, unlucky-in-love lawyer who finds herself having to work with the ex she has never got over… and his new wife.
With the uncomfortable romantic triangle at its centre, the legal cases the characters took on often reflected aspects of their personal lives. Social issues, too, were explored in the legal proceedings that also touched upon the characters’ own lives.
Although Ally, herself, rates on the lightweight end of the spectrum of fictional lawyers (this was the age of the iconic ‘90s supermodels and Ally’s skirts are ridiculously short), the series was ahead of its time with its unisex toilets, internet sensation dancing baby, use of music (mostly live performances in a bar frequented by the lawyers), innovative use of visual imagery to express Ally’s private thoughts and mix of gritty contemporary issues and surreal fantasy sequences.
As with every US legal series, the lawyers in it are impossibly glamorous and designer-clad. From LA Law in the 1980s to Suits which began in 2011, the glossiness of American legal shows draws thousands of young people to law schools, hoping for a glittering career that makes them a fortune. It’s a far cry from the generally crumpled and exhausted lawyers of British legal dramas.
However, at its heart Ally McBeal touched upon many less than glamorous subjects. Ally first joins Cage and Fish after suffering sexual harassment at her previous firm. The issue of women lawyers being hired for their looks is never far from the surface. Under the guise of comic mishaps in her disastrous search for love, there lurked the personal loneliness of the busy professional with lots of contacts, who, in the quiet of the night, fears that they will never find the one intimate connection they seek (echoing another 1990s heroine, Bridget Jones, who also used comedy to mask the terror of ending up alone). At one point Ally’s ex, Billy even tells her she will never experience true happiness! But it wasn’t just about asking the question whether a woman can really have it all. Ally’s male colleagues, too, struggled to find meaningful personal connections. The work-life balance, which has become such a feature of real-life legal discourse was openly explored in the series.
Ally was not a particularly loveable character or a brilliant lawyer. She could lose her composure in court and be unprofessional. She could pull rank and be mean to friends. In short, she was a messy human being and insecure lawyer.
As such, she resonated with those of us who are not perfect.
The show also touched upon homosexuality and trans issues. Did it do so with a 2025 sensibility? No, but of course it could not, it was made in the ‘90s. And surely, the point of nostalgia is to go back in time and not take your present with you while doing so?
The series was created by David E Kelley, a former attorney, who, following the sage advice to write what you know about, also created legal dramas The Practice and Boston Legal. While the characters they played stumbled and fumbled in the romance steeplechase, the show itself turned out to be a sort of celebrity Tinder for the actors. It also revived careers, notably that of now Oscar winner Robert Downey Jnr, created new ones for the likes of Lucy Lui and paved the way for whacky visuals and exaggerated characters to be used in mainstream television to capture social norms and cultural obsessions, in programmes like The Office and Scrubs.
So, set aside 2025, Instagram, X and TikTok for a few hours, don your Nirvana T shirt and huddle down for some hours of ‘90s manic lawyers living, loving and messing up life. Who knows you might just emerge from the marathon with a re-found sparkle in your eyes.
Rehna Azim is a family law barrister at 42 BR Barristers. She is the editor of itsalawyerslife.com and founder of The Legal Style Awards.
I once read about a person who, tired of the stresses and strains of their busy professional life, recreated their teenage bedroom. Complete with posters of childhood pop idols on the walls, bedclothes of the era, a record player to play the music they had loved, a wardrobe packed with terrible clothes once deemed cool and diaries full of cringeworthy teenage angst, they would go into that room after work each day to immerse themselves in their teen life, for hours.
The experiment refreshed them enormously. After a period, friends began to comment on how much younger and at peace they looked.
I can’t promise that watching legal shows from our younger years will will shave ten years off your face, but it can be a happy place for many of us to inhabit again. It harks back to what we fondly imagine were simpler times, better times, happier times. Whether they were or not is a moot point. To quote Sheryl Crowe: ‘If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.’
The choice of classic legal TV shows is huge, depending on your range of channels or subscription packages. They range from Perry Mason, Rumpole of the Bailey and Crown Court to LA Law, Kavanagh QC, Silk and many more.
When Counsel magazine asked me to step back in time, I instinctively returned to the 1990s. It was a glorious decade. In Britain George Michael and David Bowie were still alive and across the Atlantic so were Prince, Chris Cornell and Jeff Buckley. Friends and Frasier were must-watch Friday night television. People disagreed with each other but still ended with a handshake.
And letters. We had letters! We bought beautiful writing pads and nice pens, sat down and really thought about what we wanted to say, instead of just firing off a quick email. We agonised over every word. If it was a love letter, we wondered how it would be received. Were we getting across our feelings? Were we coming on too strong? Should we post it, should we not? And then when we did, we wanted to crawl inside the letterbox and pull it out to re-write it.
We spoke to people on landlines. If we were desperate to hear from someone, we would wait in and sit by the telephone. We knew the agony of Dorothy Parker’s ‘A Telephone Call’.
And there was an American TV lawyer called Ally McBeal.
The series started in 1997 and aired until 2002. It was set in a Boston law firm, Cage and Fish, although its focus was largely the personal lives of the main characters. Calista Flockhart, in the title role, was a quirky, unlucky-in-love lawyer who finds herself having to work with the ex she has never got over… and his new wife.
With the uncomfortable romantic triangle at its centre, the legal cases the characters took on often reflected aspects of their personal lives. Social issues, too, were explored in the legal proceedings that also touched upon the characters’ own lives.
Although Ally, herself, rates on the lightweight end of the spectrum of fictional lawyers (this was the age of the iconic ‘90s supermodels and Ally’s skirts are ridiculously short), the series was ahead of its time with its unisex toilets, internet sensation dancing baby, use of music (mostly live performances in a bar frequented by the lawyers), innovative use of visual imagery to express Ally’s private thoughts and mix of gritty contemporary issues and surreal fantasy sequences.
As with every US legal series, the lawyers in it are impossibly glamorous and designer-clad. From LA Law in the 1980s to Suits which began in 2011, the glossiness of American legal shows draws thousands of young people to law schools, hoping for a glittering career that makes them a fortune. It’s a far cry from the generally crumpled and exhausted lawyers of British legal dramas.
However, at its heart Ally McBeal touched upon many less than glamorous subjects. Ally first joins Cage and Fish after suffering sexual harassment at her previous firm. The issue of women lawyers being hired for their looks is never far from the surface. Under the guise of comic mishaps in her disastrous search for love, there lurked the personal loneliness of the busy professional with lots of contacts, who, in the quiet of the night, fears that they will never find the one intimate connection they seek (echoing another 1990s heroine, Bridget Jones, who also used comedy to mask the terror of ending up alone). At one point Ally’s ex, Billy even tells her she will never experience true happiness! But it wasn’t just about asking the question whether a woman can really have it all. Ally’s male colleagues, too, struggled to find meaningful personal connections. The work-life balance, which has become such a feature of real-life legal discourse was openly explored in the series.
Ally was not a particularly loveable character or a brilliant lawyer. She could lose her composure in court and be unprofessional. She could pull rank and be mean to friends. In short, she was a messy human being and insecure lawyer.
As such, she resonated with those of us who are not perfect.
The show also touched upon homosexuality and trans issues. Did it do so with a 2025 sensibility? No, but of course it could not, it was made in the ‘90s. And surely, the point of nostalgia is to go back in time and not take your present with you while doing so?
The series was created by David E Kelley, a former attorney, who, following the sage advice to write what you know about, also created legal dramas The Practice and Boston Legal. While the characters they played stumbled and fumbled in the romance steeplechase, the show itself turned out to be a sort of celebrity Tinder for the actors. It also revived careers, notably that of now Oscar winner Robert Downey Jnr, created new ones for the likes of Lucy Lui and paved the way for whacky visuals and exaggerated characters to be used in mainstream television to capture social norms and cultural obsessions, in programmes like The Office and Scrubs.
So, set aside 2025, Instagram, X and TikTok for a few hours, don your Nirvana T shirt and huddle down for some hours of ‘90s manic lawyers living, loving and messing up life. Who knows you might just emerge from the marathon with a re-found sparkle in your eyes.
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Author: Charlotte Proudman Reviewer: Stephanie Hayward
