Namgoong Min fights for affordable justice in One Dollar Lawyer

by Jenzy

SBS’s upcoming drama One Dollar Lawyer has dropped some new stills and its first teaser, giving us a look into the comedic elements of the drama and answering the question we’ve all been asking: can Namgoong Min pull off what his character summary describes as a “sophisticated perm”? (Spoiler: he can!)

Namgoong Min (The Veil) plays Cheon Ji-hoon, a gifted lawyer who takes on the oppressed and underprivileged as clients while only charging them 1,000 won in legal fees. He’s an unstoppable force in court with the suave hair to match, but his dogged pursuit of justice makes him many enemies among the corrupt rich and entitled.

Ji-hoon’s fight for his clients will have him crossing paths with certain high-level prosecutors such as our golden-spooned female lead Baek Mari, played by Kim Ji-eun (Again My Life), and her power-hungry colleague Seo Min-hyuk, played by Choi Dae-hoon (Insider). In a world of political machinations and backdoor deals, our hero will have to use his wits to fight for justice while keeping himself under his already low budget.

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The drama’s first teaser gives us major vigilante Batman vibes. In the first scene, Ji-hoon walks down the street, picking up the sounds of helpless cries (“I didn’t do it” “Please help me”) like a radio picks up a signal. In the next scene he narrates, “I heard you needed someone to save you,” while he epically struts in the night to a potential client. The client is shocked when Ji-hoon confirms that yes, he’ll only need to pay him with the change in his pocket.

We then cut to some scenes of him out in the field, investigating crime scenes, fighting with police officers (verbally), gangsters (physically), and pointing accusatory Phoenix Wright fingers at people. All the while we hear voiceovers of exasperated people asking him if he really needs to make these open-and-shut cases more complicated than they need to be. He answers them all with his definition that a lawyer is someone who fights for his clients.

Penned by the writer duo Choi Soo-jin and Choi Chang-hwan (Heart Surgeons, Defendant) and directed by Kim Jae-hyun, One Dollar Lawyer will air starting September 23 in the Friday-Saturday slot on SBS.