General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20267 min read

Pro Bono (프로보노)

Pro Bono (프로보노) is a South Korean television courtroom drama that aired on the cable channel tvN as a Saturday and Sunday series from December 6, 2025 to January 11, 2026. Written by Moon Yu-seok and directed by Kim Sung-yoon, it follows an ambitious judge whose career collapses in a scandal and who is forced into his firm's unprofitable public-interest litigation team.¹^•² The title comes from the Latin pro bono publico, "for the public good," the term used in the legal profession for unpaid legal services provided to those who cannot afford a lawyer.³

Key fact	Detail
Network and slot	tvN Saturday-Sunday drama, first broadcast December 6, 2025 at 9:10 p.m.²^•⁴
Run	12 episodes; the finale (episodes 11 and 12) aired back to back on January 11, 2026⁵
Creative team	Written by Moon Yu-seok, directed by Kim Sung-yoon; planned by Studio Dragon¹^•⁶
Main cast	Jung Kyung-ho as Kang Da-wit, So Ju-yeon as Park Ki-ppum, with Yoon Na-moo, Seo Hye-won, Kang Hyung-seok, and Lee Yoo-young⁷
Genre	Comic human courtroom drama about a status-seeking judge who involuntarily becomes a pro bono lawyer⁷
Finale rating	10.0% nationwide (Nielsen Korea), reached in the final episode⁸
Availability	Listed for streaming on Netflix and TVING⁷

Premise

Kang Da-wit is a judge driven entirely by career advancement, closing in on an appointment to the Supreme Court when a discovery in a car trunk threatens to destroy fifteen years of work in an instant.⁹ After the scandal he enters South Korea's top-ranked law firm, only to be assigned to its public-interest litigation team, which has zero fees and zero revenue; his first case as a newly licensed lawyer is the theft of an abandoned dog.²^•⁹

The drama is billed as a human courtroom story about a former judge trapped in a mega law firm's back room with a team that earns nothing.² According to its official description, the storyline follows this "vulgar" judge, once fixed on wealth and honor, as he takes on the cases of society's most vulnerable people, the very matters he had dismissed as trivial.¹⁰

Characters

The team at the center of the drama carries the firm's pro bono caseload. Jung Kyung-ho plays Kang Da-wit, the team leader; So Ju-yeon plays Park Ki-ppum, a 31-year-old lawyer on the public-interest litigation team; Yoon Na-moo plays Jang Young-seol; Seo Hye-won plays Yu Nan-hee; and Kang Hyung-seok plays Hwang Jun-woo. Lee Yoo-young plays Oh Jung-in, a partner at the firm and daughter of its founder.¹¹^•⁷

Ki-ppum is written as a true believer: she applied to the newly created pro bono team the moment the internal notice appeared, and her work consists largely of finding loopholes in the legal provisions she had loved, used by actors she once saw as villains of the courtroom dramas she adored.¹¹ Reviewers highlighted her arc: in episodes 5 and 6, a case involving the divorce and residency status of a governor's daughter-in-law tested the team's collective judgment, and Ki-ppum's steadiness in listening to the client to the end drew renewed attention to So Ju-yeon.¹²

Production and release

The series was produced as a Studio Dragon title for tvN's weekend slot, with the production confirmed in the company's business report as a December 6, 2025 to January 11, 2026 run of twelve episodes.¹ At the online production presentation on December 2, 2025, director Kim Sung-yoon stressed the drama's difference from earlier courtroom series, saying the title refers to lawyers' free legal counseling and that Pro Bono was the first drama to focus on large law firms' dedicated public-interest teams, a subject other dramas had not dealt with.¹³

The drama was one of three tvN titles of the period, along with Almighty Love and Taepung Corporation, pre-sold to global OTT platforms ahead of broadcast, which the producer's analysts cited as supporting steady results.¹⁴ A location database records 63 domestic filming sites, concentrated in Seoul (47), Gyeonggi Province (13), Incheon (2), and Gangwon (1).¹⁵

Storylines and finale

Cases taken by the team center on socially vulnerable clients, and the series drew popularity for Da-wit's stirring defenses on behalf of abandoned dogs, people with disabilities, and foreign workers.⁸ Episode 8 marked a turning point: the team confronted constitutional provisions that had failed to keep pace with social change and carried out a national assembly audit, and the episode placed first in its time slot among cable and general programming channels, including first among viewers aged 20 to 49, tvN's core demographic.¹⁶

Finale. The last two episodes, broadcast together on January 11, 2026, staged Da-wit's final confrontation with a legal-establishment cartel: corrupt tycoon Jang Hyun-bae (Song Young-chang), Supreme Court justice Shin Joong-seok (Lee Moon-sik), and Oh Kyu-jang (Kim Kap-soo), founder of the firm Oh & Partners.⁵^•⁸ Da-wit calls Oh Kyu-jang as a witness and releases a recording of their conversations, exposing a contract clause promising 10% of future profits in exchange for a judgeship, a deal he rejects in court.⁵ A reversal follows when Oh Jung-in is revealed to have secretly cooperated with Da-wit; she takes over the firm, the pro bono team, which had been notified of mass dismissal, returns to the company, and Da-wit, disillusioned with a new management that still sides with capital, leaves with his teammates to establish a public-interest law firm, declaring the pro bono team's independence.⁶^•⁸^•⁵

Ratings and reception

Ratings rose across the run. Nielsen Korea measured the final episode at 10.0% nationwide, closing the series in double digits.⁸ The run was not monotonic: ratings dipped during the overlap with year-end award broadcasts and the competing SBS drama Taxi Driver 3, then rebounded to 7.9% with episode 6.¹⁷ In a January 2026 industry analysis of drama performer visibility, Jung Kyung-ho ranked 15th among drama performers with 2,002 combined blog and news mentions attributed to Pro Bono.¹⁸

Critical and audience reception located the series in a recent shift in Korean courtroom drama. Where earlier courtroom series centered on legal professionals punishing grand evil, recent well-received works portray lawyers in realistic, human-scale material, and Pro Bono was grouped with Extraordinary Attorney Woo, One Thousand Won Lawyer, Squire, and Divorce Attorney Shin as dramas built on humanism rather than legal authority.¹⁹ The same commentary noted that where Squire follows the growth of newly minted lawyers, Pro Bono is grounded in the reflection of a judge who has fallen.¹⁹ On the review aggregator KinoLights the series held an audience score of about 84% with user reviews averaging roughly 3.2 to 3.3 out of 5.⁷

The term behind the title

The title names the real-world practice the drama dramatizes. Pro bono abbreviates the Latin pro bono publico, "for the public good," and in the legal profession it means providing legal services without fee to individuals or organizations that cannot afford counsel.³^•²⁰ More generally, the term describes professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and doctors contributing their expertise without compensation for public benefit.²¹

In South Korea the practice has moved from the volunteer efforts of individual lawyers toward institutionalized activity, supported by court-led programs covering access to justice for the vulnerable, support for self-represented litigants, language access for foreigners and immigrants, and opportunities for law students.²² Corporate pro bono programs also operate outside the legal field, matching employees' professional skills with free advisory work for social enterprises in fields such as law, accounting, marketing, and human resources.²³ A Korean law-exam preparation commentary, using the drama's premiere as its hook, states that South Korea was the first country to make lawyers' public-interest activity mandatory by law.³

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 18, 2026; Sep 19, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 18, 2026; Oct 25, 2026