May It Please the Court (2022) official poster
📺 K-Drama Guide · Legal · Mystery

May It Please the Court

변론을 시작하겠습니다 · 2022
✅ Completed · 12 eps
🎬 Disney+ · Hulu
⭐ 7.9 MDL
📺 15+
⚡ Updated · Jun 24, 2026

📋 Drama Overview

What you’re getting into, at a glance.

May It Please the Court (2022) poster
Completed
⚖️ Legal Thriller Pick
May It Please the Court
변론을 시작하겠습니다 (Byeonlon-eul sijak-hagetseumnida) · 2022 · South Korea
WriterKim Dan
DirectorKang Min-koo
Episodes12 eps · ~60 min each
Where to Watch✅ Disney+, Hulu
⏱️
Binge Time12h 0m
AiredSep 21 – Oct 26, 2022
NetworkDisney+
GenreLegal · Mystery · Thriller
Content Rating15+

Disney+
Hulu
Legal Drama
Serial Murder
Political Corruption
Public Defender
Cold Case

Noh Chak-hee is the kind of lawyer who wins. Not because justice has always been on her side — because she’s been careful about which cases to take. Her reassignment from Jangsan’s elite litigation team to a provincial public defender’s office isn’t framed as punishment. But everyone, including Chak-hee, understands what it is.

The cases she and her eccentric new partner Jwa Si-baek inherit keep pointing at the same pattern: wealthy men, brutal deaths, and a silence that has held for decades. As the murders accumulate, so does the evidence that Chak-hee’s past and the victims’ secrets share more geography than coincidence. What begins as an inconvenient reassignment becomes the most consequential case she’s ever had — and the first one she didn’t choose.

Episode Progress
12 / 12 ✅ Completed

⚡ Quick Verdict

No scrolling required — the verdict’s right here.

⭐ Worth it?Sharp enough to reward attention — built for viewers who want legal consequences, not courtroom theatrics
⏱️ CommitmentMedium — ~12 hours total
⚖️ VibeProcedural · Cold · Conspiratorial
📺 Skip if…You want romance or feel-good pacing — this is all case work and moral reckoning

7.9 / 10
MDL Score · Check MyDramaList for updated community rating

▶ Official Trailer

🎭 Cast & Characters

Jung Ryeo-won and Lee Kyoo-hyung lead a cast that keeps the courtroom uncomfortable.

Jung Ryeo-won as Noh Chak-hee in May It Please the Court (2022)
Jung Ryeo-won
Noh Chak-hee

Lead

Lee Kyoo-hyung as Jwah Si-baek in May It Please the Court (2022)
Lee Kyoo-hyung
Jwah Si-baek

Lead

Jung Jin-young as Jang Ki-do in May It Please the Court (2022)
Jung Jin-young
Jang Ki-do

Villain

Kim Hye-eun as Oh Ha-ran in May It Please the Court (2022)
Kim Hye-eun
Oh Ha-ran

Supporting

Kim Sang-ho as Shin Chi-shik in May It Please the Court (2022)
Kim Sang-ho
Shin Chi-shik

Supporting

Park So-jin as Jang Yi-yeon in May It Please the Court (2022)
Park So-jin
Jang Yi-yeon

Supporting

Ko Kyu-pil as Do Young-su in May It Please the Court (2022)
Ko Kyu-pil
Do Young-su

Supporting

Hong Seo-jun as Oh Dae-hyun in May It Please the Court (2022)
Hong Seo-jun
Oh Dae-hyun

Supporting

Lee Sang-hee as Yoo Kyung-jin in May It Please the Court (2022)
Lee Sang-hee
Yoo Kyung-jin

Supporting

Kwon You-na as Lee Yoo-jin in May It Please the Court (2022)
Kwon You-na
Lee Yoo-jin

Supporting

Shin Hee-gook in May It Please the Court (2022)
Shin Hee-gook

Supporting

Oh Man-seok as No Yu Cheol in May It Please the Court (2022)
Oh Man-seok
No Yu Cheol

Supporting

🍿 Where to Watch

Stream May It Please the Court on these platforms.

📺 Episode Guide

Light-touch recaps to keep you oriented, episode by episode.

May It Please the Court Episode 1 — The Cost of Winning
EP 01
The Cost of Winning
September 21, 2022
One of those dramas where the first scene tells you exactly what kind of person the main character is — then immediately makes that a liability. Chak-hee wins a pharmaceutical case. Her client gets what they wanted. The fallout strips her of everything she built. The show’s first argument is already on the table: being right and being useful aren’t the same thing, and the people in power know the difference.

May It Please the Court Episode 2 — Incompatible Methods
EP 02
Incompatible Methods
September 21, 2022
The partnership that begins here is not a partnership. It’s two people who solve problems differently being told they have to share a workspace. What Jwa Si-baek sees in clients — their person, their history, their vulnerability — is exactly what Chak-hee was trained to filter out. Lee Kyoo-hyung plays the eccentricity without winking; it doesn’t read as quirk, it reads as a different and more inconvenient kind of rigor.

May It Please the Court Episode 3 — The Pattern Emerges
EP 03
The Pattern Emerges
September 28, 2022
A defense case connects to a wealthy defendant with connections, and then to another case, and then to a shape. Chak-hee’s unease isn’t professional inconvenience — it’s recognition. The system she understood and navigated is doing something here she hasn’t named yet, and the episode earns its tension by letting her stay in that uncertainty rather than rushing toward a revelation she’s not ready for.

May It Please the Court Episode 4 — Containment
EP 04
Containment
September 28, 2022
The M.O. is too distinctive to deny: water, a specific knot, victims who share more than wealth. Jang Ki-do doesn’t want this investigated — he wants it managed. Jung Jin-young plays that distinction with perfect control, never letting you see the panic underneath the authority. The episode’s most revealing moment isn’t an action; it’s the speed at which Jang Ki-do stops the conversation when the wrong question gets asked.

May It Please the Court Episode 5 — Why Public Defense
EP 05
Why Public Defense
October 5, 2022
The episode built around the question of Jwa Si-baek. He didn’t fall into this office — he walked toward it deliberately, after something. The eccentricity stops being character flavor here and becomes consequence. One of the better origin reveals of the season: quiet, and heavier for the quiet.

May It Please the Court Episode 6 — Thirty Years Ago
EP 06
Thirty Years Ago
October 5, 2022
Water. A knot. A crime that should have been named thirty years ago, and wasn’t. The forensic connection transforms the serial murder case from professional complication into something that implicates both lawyers’ pasts — and the episode is good enough to make that shift feel earned rather than mechanical. Chak-hee’s face when the geography of the victims’ lives intersects with her own is Jung Ryeo-won doing the thing she does best: processing without performing.

May It Please the Court Episode 7 — Structural Corruption
EP 07
Structural Corruption
October 12, 2022
The protection these men received wasn’t luck — it was built. Episode 7 explains how, and by whom, and why Oh Ha-ran has been watching Jang Ki-do with such careful neutrality. Some answers arrive. They complicate everything that came before them and make the next questions harder to ask without risk.

May It Please the Court Episode 8 — Historical Grievance
EP 08
Historical Grievance
October 12, 2022
Thirty years is a long time for a crime to wait. The investigation moves backward, and as it does, Chak-hee and Jwa Si-baek stop being colleagues and start being targets — people who now know things that specific people have spent decades making sure nobody knew. The episode’s shift in stakes is clean. They weren’t just building a case. They were walking into someone else’s unfinished business.

May It Please the Court Episode 9 — Operating Under Pressure
EP 09
Operating Under Pressure
October 19, 2022
Media attention. Prosecutorial interference. Jangsan pressure. All three arrive at once, and Chak-hee has to navigate them without compromising the defense. The shift from corporate lawyer to public defender completes here — not in a dramatic declaration, but because the case stopped giving her any other option. Jung Ryeo-won plays the fatigue with the particular restraint of someone who has decided something and isn’t going back.

May It Please the Court Episode 10 — Who Knew What
EP 10
Who Knew What
October 19, 2022
The revelations here are not about facts. They’re about knowledge — who held it, when, and what they chose to do with it while people were being shielded from accountability. The last alliances the show was holding in reserve don’t collapse dramatically. They just become impossible. Trust, once the arithmetic is done, doesn’t survive the math.

May It Please the Court Episode 11 — The Facade Cracks
EP 11
The Facade Cracks
October 26, 2022
Witnesses surface. Cracks appear in Jang Ki-do’s authority. Both lawyers move into direct conflict with institutions that have been working against them since Episode 1. The penultimate episode doesn’t have room for subtlety, and doesn’t try for it. What comes next is not an evidence problem.

May It Please the Court Episode 12 — The Defense Rests · Finale
EP 12
The Defense Rests · Finale
October 26, 2022
The killer is named. The network of protection is dismantled. And Noh Chak-hee stands up in a room and says exactly what kind of lawyer she has been — which is a different and more difficult thing than saying what kind of lawyer she intends to be. The finale is disciplined: it closes every arc it opened, gives every character a specific resolution rather than vague closure, and gives Jung Ryeo-won a final scene that the whole drama was quietly working toward.

🏁 Ending Explained

The finale, unpacked in full. Consider yourself warned.

⚠️
Spoiler Warning — This section covers the full finale of May It Please the Court. Stop here if you haven’t finished the series.

The Killer’s Motive. The murders were not random. They were systematic — men who shared a specific crime from thirty years prior, believed themselves to have gotten away with it, and were wrong. The finale names the killer and closes the loop on what that crime was. It’s not a twist engineered for shock; it’s the confirmation of a pattern the show has been building toward since Episode 6. The anger behind it is comprehensible. The method is not. What the show understands, and what the finale earns, is that these two things can be simultaneously true.

May It Please the Court (2022) — Ending Explained

Noh Chak-hee’s Choice. What Chak-hee does in the finale matters more than what she proves. She doesn’t just win a case — she makes a public accounting of the compromises her previous career required, which is a different thing entirely and a harder one. The scene is not written as confession. It’s written as correction. Chak-hee spent years being useful to people who needed wrong things done carefully. The finale is the moment she stops — not because the system punished her for it, but because she stopped being willing.

Jwa Si-baek’s Disclosure. Jwa Si-baek’s past finally surfaces: why he rejected conventional legal prestige, and how his choices fed directly into the exposure of this crime. The revelation doesn’t make him a different character — it makes the version we’ve been watching make sense in a new register. He didn’t opt out of a prestigious career. He was responding to something specific. What he built in place of that career, it turns out, mattered in ways he couldn’t have predicted.

May It Please the Court (2022) — Ending Explained

Jang Ki-do’s Collapse. Jang Ki-do’s political ambitions — and the protection he extended to people who needed that protection — are dismantled through evidence rather than drama. The finale doesn’t give him a confrontation scene with moral weight. It gives him consequences. Oh Ha-ran’s role throughout — what she knew, when, and what she chose to do with that knowledge — is resolved with specificity. The show doesn’t spare her, but it doesn’t simplify her either. Kim Hye-eun plays the final resolution as someone who has been carrying a calculation for ten episodes and is only now allowed to set it down.

The Legal System’s Reckoning. May It Please the Court ends with the justice system forced to reckon with how it was used. Not reformed — that would be too optimistic for a show this clear-eyed about how institutions work. But accountable, at least on paper, which is where all institutional accountability starts. Chak-hee walks out of the finale as a public defender. Not because she failed to return to corporate law. Because she stopped wanting to.

May It Please the Court (2022) — Ending Explained

✍️ KDramaWorlds Editor’s Take

Here’s our honest verdict, and who’s going to love it.

🔍 Conspiratorial
⚖️ Legal Precision
🩸 Cold Anger
🏛️ Institutional Rot
🕵️ Slow Burn

Jung Ryeo-won has made a career out of characters who are competent in ways that cost them something. In May It Please the Court, she plays that register with precision — Noh Chak-hee is formidable and compromised in equal measure, and Ryeo-won handles the transition from institutional operator to something more principled without softening either version. She doesn’t play the first Chak-hee as a villain, which is the right call; she plays her as someone who made a series of reasonable choices that turned out to have a shape she never examined. It’s in her stillness during the early courtroom scenes — the economy of movement that reads less as confidence than as someone who has learned to perform certainty — that you understand exactly what kind of reckoning is coming. Viewers who appreciated Extraordinary Attorney Woo for its legal procedural clarity will find this the darker counterpart — same world, opposite moral compass at the start.

May It Please the Court (2022) — Editor's Pick

Lee Kyoo-hyung’s Jwa Si-baek is the show’s most interesting performance decision: a character coded as comic relief in the early episodes who reveals himself, gradually, as the person who understood the case from the beginning. Kyoo-hyung plays the eccentricity without winking at the audience — the oddness is real, not performed — which means when the backstory arrives, it doesn’t feel like a rewrite. It feels like the explanation the show owed you. There’s a specific quality to how Si-baek listens to clients that Kyoo-hyung commits to from the first episode: a stillness that isn’t patience, exactly, but something slower and more deliberate, as if he’s waiting to hear the thing behind the thing being said. It’s the kind of performance that only pays off if you trust it early. Followers of his supporting work in Beyond Evil will recognize the precision — this is the role where he gets the center of the frame, and earns it.

The middle section — Episodes 5 through 7 — is where the serial murder investigation moves slower than the emotional stakes warrant, and some of the corporate conspiracy threads take more episodes to pay off than feels proportionate. The show also never quite decides what to do with Oh Ha-ran: Kim Hye-eun plays the ambiguity with control, but the character’s final resolution arrives too quickly for something the drama treated as a long game. Stick with it anyway. The finale is disciplined and specific — it closes every arc it opened — and Jung Ryeo-won’s last scene is the choice the whole drama was quietly working toward. Twelve episodes, no wasted resolution.

👍👍👍 BEST FOR 👍👍👍
⚖️ Legal drama fans who want moral weight, not courtroom theatrics
🔍 Viewers who like mysteries that reward paying attention from the start
🕯️ Anyone patient enough for a slow burn that actually closes every thread it opened

⚖️ Final Verdict
What works
Jung Ryeo-won’s transformation from institutional operator to principled defender
Jwa Si-baek’s backstory reframes the entire partnership retroactively
A 30-year-old crime at the center that gives the mystery real structural weight

What to know first
Episodes 5–7 move slower than the stakes around them warrant
Oh Ha-ran’s arc resolves too quickly given how long the show treated it as a slow game
Romance is not a factor — this is entirely case work and moral reckoning

7.5 / 10
A legal thriller that understands the law is not where justice lives — but it might still be where accountability begins.

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KDW Editor Editorial Team, KDramaWorlds

This review was written and fact-checked by the KDW editorial team — a small group of K-drama viewers who watch every title before writing about it. No screeners, no synopsis-only takes.

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