The Story:

Recent Seoul University Law School graduate Kang Hyo Min (Jung Chae Yeon) is busy looking for her first professional job as an entry-level corporate attorney, but she starts off having a rough time of it, applying to prestigious Yullim Law Firm in the city but arriving late for the interview and in a rather disheveled condition to boot, which doesn't impress the lead attorney in the firm, Esquire Yoon Seok Hoon (Lee Jin Wook).

He dismisses her before the interview can begin, yet soon thereafter he learns from his colleagues that Hyo Min had won first place in a national mock trial competition. They strongly suggest to him that he should give her a second chance at an interview, otherwise she might end up at their chief competitive law firm, Lee And Seo Inc. Reluctantly, Seok Hoon allows her to be interviewed, and she does succeed at impressing him and his colleagues enough with her creative legal thought processes. She is hired along with several other new trainees but Seok Hoon is still on his guard in trusting her capability to handle particularly difficult cases that are coming up on the law firm's schedule.

Hyo Min's first case is with the Gangdon City Gas Company. She wisely goes to a shareholder meeting to get some basic information on their financial condition and she soon learns of a steep drop in sales at one particular location in the country. She’s quick to realize somebody is stealing gas at this spot, and the company is losing lots of money because of it. She takes two days to do necessary fieldwork, find the culprits, and she then returns to Yullim, nearly getting dismissed again for not telling anybody what she had been up to, plus showing up to work disheveled yet again! However, when she shows her powerful evidence about the theft, there’s no choice but for Esquire Seok Hoon to go along with her plan to win the case in the best way she knows how. And win the case she does!

The other attorneys she works with grow increasingly impressed with her legal work, including Seok Hoon's right hand man, lawyer Lee Jin Woo (Lee Hak Joo) and older female attorney Heo Min Jeong (Jeon Hye Bin) who is in her early 40's but certainly doesn't look it! Hyo Min grows confident enough at work so that she no longer feels she has to cling to a lawyer boyfriend who works at Lee And Seo, named Han Seong Chan (Kang Sang Joon). She breaks off her relationship with him and then ironically ends up having to compete against him in court on various cases.

Meanwhile we begin to understand why lead attorney Seok Hoon rarely smiles and is very quiet at work, barely ever socializing with anyone. His wife Yeon A (Ji E Suu) had divorced him because she didn't want children but he did. They had shared taking care of their cute white dog together when married, but she had taken primary custody of the pup when she left the marriage and he only gets to see the dog infrequently. Denied children and his loving pet, rejected by his wife, Seok Hoon is very lonely. Over time he does seem to grow closer to Hyo Min, who is exceptionally patient and kind with him, especially after she learns about his personal situation. He also spends more time with her, going over her legal cases, with mostly positive results for her success rate at work.

Many of Hyo Min's cases required her to work overtime so that her clients could grow to trust her, particularly if they were male clients; this included a very sad case where a husband had been lied to by a fertility clinic when he and his wife had tried to use IVF to get pregnant, and the clinic had disposed of his sperm sample by mistake, then he got cancer and needed an operation which would tragically make him infertile. Hyo Min won a lucrative financial settlement for the couple. Another case entailed a husband who had helped his wife achieve an assisted suicide, and Hyo Min had helped him avoid criminal charges; then there was a case of a famous painter who was bringing a copyright case against a young woman whom he claimed had ripped off his older work; then there were some unusual divorce cases, including one in which the person who seemed the most to blame for the separation was actually the innocent party. One of the scariest cases even entailed Hyo Min herself being falsely accused of murder!

So if you love an intriguing, unpredictable legal drama look no further than Beyond The Bar! I noticed every fan online was begging for there to be a Season Two for this drama. All of us opining on the subject sounded just like Edward G. Robinson in the classic film Key Largo: "I WANT MORE!"  ;) Enjoy!

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