What Are Notable Broadway Shows About Lawyers?
How many shows can you name that feature lawyers?
By: Jennifer Ashley Tepper May. 25, 2025
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This time, the reader question was: What are some notable Broadway shows about lawyers?
Did a lawyer ask this question?
Two of the most famous lawyers in modern history are Ross Cellino Jr. and Steve Barnes. A hilarious dark comedy about the law partners, titled Cellino v. Barnes, ran off-Broadway earlier this year, starring Eric William Morris and Noah Weisberg and written by Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes.
Cellino and Barnes were a personal injury law firm with an extremely catchy commercial jingle that pushed them into the cultural consciousness. Masters of advertising, the two lawyers became incredibly successful household names, raking in millions of dollars. Their dramatic downfall in 2005 made the headlines, a platonic breakup that was followed for its juicy details. All of these details are laid out to great comedic affect on stage at Asylum NYC, often an improv venue but currently in legit off-Broadway use. The law is on full dramatic display as the entire piece revolves around the rise and fall of Cellino and Barnes.
For many interested in lawyers on stage, the first that comes to mind is Elle Woods. The pink-loving, brilliant leading lady who marches to the beat of her own drum got her own Broadway musical in 2007, and Legally Blonde, adapted from the film, has since become hugely popular in licensing. Elle Woods’ journey at Harvard Law is chronicled in the bouncy pop musical which is full of heart and humor, plus other lawyer characters as well, from problematic Professor Callahan to brainy love interest Emmett. Several plot lines involve elements of the law.
Of course characters in the landmark Hamilton are lawyers, and law is relevant throughout the show, without being the main point of the musical. Both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr practiced law, and their experiences as trial lawyers impacted their political careers. Also currently on Broadway is Chicago, the second longest running Broadway show in history, where lawyer Billy Flynn defends Roxie Hart for murder. The musical premiered in its play form on Broadway in 1926, became a Broadway musical in 1975 and opened its current revival in 1996.
New York City Center Encores’ upcoming and long-awaited production of Love Life features lawyers and a court room scene. The early concept musical is about a married couple over the course of time; the duo’s ages never change, but the world around them does. Act two contains a vaudevillian divorce sequence set in court.
There are notable musicals with more serious legal battles depicted. Parade, which is now on tour following a hit Broadway revival, meaningfully depicts the trial of Leo Frank, a victim of Anti-Semitism in 1913 Georgia. Significant parts of the show are set in the court room as lawyers go to battle over the case against Frank. The acclaimed 2010 Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys dramatizes the trial of nine Black teenagers, ages 12 to 19, who were falsely accused of rape in 1931 Alabama. The indictment of racism was brilliantly realized as a powerful musical. More recently, Suffs (2024) depicted several lawyers who were embroiled the fight for women’s suffrage, including Inez Milholland and Doris Stevens.
The best theme song for lawyers in a Broadway musical might just be one that was only technically heard in one performance. “Lawyers” from A Broadway Musical is a slam-bang showstopper about you-guessed-it, lawyers. The show closed on opening night in 1978, after 14 previews at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. The music was by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams, better known for collaborating on Bye Bye Birdie.
Plays may have one over on musicals in terms of the volume of pieces containing lawyers. Because of their format, plays inherently give audiences a more similar experience to watching a television episode of a show they love about lawyers, such as Law & Order. Unlike the show that inspired this story, Cellino v. Barnes, most plays about lawyers are dramas as opposed to comedies.
Some of the best known plays that include lawyers and law cases have won the Tony Award for Best Play, including A Man for All Seasons (1961), a British play about the Lord Chancellor of England who would not sanction Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. Others have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama like Crimes of the Heart, the 1981 play about three sisters coping with a lifetime of dysfunction. Angels in America (1993) has the distinction of having won both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer; one of the play’s main characters is the nefarious lawyer Roy Cohn.
In the beginning of the 20th century, lawyers were already a popular topic for dramatization. The Trial of Mary Dugan (1927), like Chicago, is about a showgirl murdering her lover. The hit show was such a favorite with the homosexual community that gay men began greeting each other by saying, “Hey, Mary Dugan!”, which was later shortened to “Hey, Mary!” Also in the late 1920s, Machinal (1928) was a groundbreaking expressionist play by Sophie Treadwell that also featured a woman murdering her romantic partner (in this case her husband)! Lawyers abounded in these three 1920s pieces that all told stories about women reclaiming power from men by desperate and illegal means.
Mid-20th century on Broadway saw 1954’s The Caine Mutiny Court Martial about a troubling naval incident. In the same year, Witness for the Prosecution premiered, based on the Agatha Christie novel about a husband and wife in unlikely positions during a trial. The important 1955 play Inherit the Wind dramatized a famous 1925 trial about the right to teach evolution in schools as a metaphor for the communist witch hunts going on in America at the time. Twelve Angry Men started out as a television play before becoming a stage play in 1955, but didn’t debut on Broadway until 2004, despite being a very popular property in licensing. The courtroom-set show is often presented in stock and amateur as Twelve Angry People or Twelve Angry Jurors, where actors of any gender identity can play the roles.
Like Twelve Angry Men, Judgement at Nuremberg started out as a television play. It became a hit film in 1961 and eventually debuted in its stage version on Broadway in 2001. The piece is about the trials of Nazi officials following World War II. 1976 saw the premiere of Sly Fox, which unlike many of the other straight plays here, is a comedy. Sly Fox, which originally starred George C. Scott and was revived on Broadway in 2004 starring Richard Dreyfuss, is about multiple characters battling for an inheritance.
In more recent years, Broadway has seen shows like Race, the 2010 David Mamet play about lawyers who are contending in various ways with a racially motivated sex crime that has complicated legal twists and turns. The short-lived 2010 play Enron also involved lawyers, in telling the story of the downfall of the behemoth energy company.
Aaron Sorkin made his Broadway debut with his 1989 play A Few Good Men, about two Marines accused of murder. Sorkin’s most recent Broadway outing, To Kill a Mockingbird, finally adapted the iconic novel for Broadway in 2018. The central character of Atticus Finch is one of the most beloved fictional lawyers of all time.
Of course, even before there was a “Broadway”, there were lawyers on stage! William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which was penned in the 1590s, features a lawyer character who is essential to the plot.
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