ABSTRACT
Today’s television viewer can encounter on the small screen as many different types of people as he would in court, law fi rms or prisons.2 These characters are seen in as many places as they would be found in the real legal world, carrying out all the possible precise jobs. This assures a greater degree of realism in the representation offered to the public, giving at the same time more solid criteria and supplementary information about the workings of the law. Sometimes, at one point or another, the private lives of these characters becomes a focus of the narrative, and can infl uence their professional lives.3 Although it is possible, as John Brigham suggests, that the representation of the judicial system is less realistic than one would like to think, this more diversifi ed image of society on the small screen of late is nevertheless closer to reality. The portrait produced of the legal profession
corresponds no doubt now to what the television viewer would see today as soon as he steps out of his home.
