History Series / LawAndOrder

* CastCalculus: Two [[PowerTrio Power Trios]], for both the ''Law'' and the ''Order'' parts, which mirrors the MixAndMatch nature of the series. The ''Law'' trio consists of the senior detective (sometimes a sergeant), the junior detective, and the CO of the 27th precinct. The ''Order'' trio consists of the Executive Assistant District Attorney, his Assistant District Attorney, and their (elected) boss, the District Attorney of New York County (Manhattan).

* MixAndMatch: The basic concept of each episode.
** Some notable episodes mentioned throughout this page change this around, however.

* StatusQuoIsGod: Very few episodes mess with the formulaic MixAndMatch or the limited information about the characters. Those that do are cited to be clunky when juxtaposed with the other elements of the episode.

The show's basic concept is a MixAndMatch, with each episode's first half, "Law", showing the detectives of the [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCityCops NYPD]]'s 27th Precinct trying to solve a crime (PoliceProcedural), and the second half, "Order", depicting the Manhattan District Attorney's office trying to prosecute the same case (LawProcedural).

* ArtisticLicenseStatistics: Subverted in "Skin Deep". [[spoiler: The defense lawyer is successfully able to convince a judge that an 80% DNA match to her client is not conclusive enough to establish culpability, and Stone is all up in arms about how the judge is an idiot for being unable to understand that science is sometimes imperfect. However, it turns out that the DNA, was, in fact, not the client's; it was the client's daughter's DNA]].

** In nearly every single case, the defendant's lawyer will procure a motion for dismissal of various evidence or against charges altogether, regardless of circumstance - and in some cases, regardless of whether they had just learned the extent of what they're suppressing or not by lying in wait with a notice pre-emptively. In almost every instance they present a [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience blue dismissal notice]] to the prosecutor's office, if not directly by hand, the instant the case has been made or shortly thereafter. Part of this has to do with streamlining the evidence presentation aspect of court hearings for pacing's sake, so the motions have to be added in somewhere. This also ties in with the decisions above, where in real life most motions to suppress major evidence ''fail'' compared to the dramatically high rate of suppression success in the series.

* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish: Lena, in "House Calls", has a thick Russian accent, but speaks English much better than any of her nonfluent family members. She even corrects Briscoe when he tells her that she speaks English good; she promptly says that she speaks English ''well''. However, it's [[spoiler: subverted when she accidentally reads "24 hours" as "2-to-4 hours"; she had thus mistakenly told her sister to take a painkiller only 2-to-4 hours after taking asthma medication, which killed her]].

* OpportunisticBastard: A lot of prosecutors are portrayed this way when looking for the death penalty to boost their career. Nora Lewin is a notable aversion, when her decision to allow an 18-year-old to be sentenced to death is against everything she stands for.

** The sheer number of times an accused defendant's attorney happens to have particularly case-blowing information, and keeps it hidden against all better judgment, would be staggering. While the defense has to honor the attorney-client privilege, many of the revelations that are inevitably made of what they are privy to or covering up should have nuked ''many'' of their cases and perhaps even their careers outright. One lawyer is outright called stupid when he was led by his defendant to the proof of the murder bodies [[TooDumbToLive and made themselves complicit by asking to see them]], yet Danielle Melnick in particular gets multiple lawyers killed because of her CrusadingLawyer shtick ''breaking a Judge's no-communication order'' with her defendant, but besides [[spoiler:a crippling gunshot injury]] returns to continue making trouble with her license intact. Disclosure to Accused is also routinely violated, where the accused are immediately told everything they need to know by their lawyer, but somehow never run afoul or hit required information needing to be sent back to the court in response; it effectively stacks the deck in every suspect's favor and puts the onus entirely on the prosecution unless a case is especially abnormal in the episode.

** The sheer number of times an accused defendant's attorney happens to have particularly case-blowing information, and keeps it hidden against all better judgment, would be staggering. While the defense has to honor the attorney-client privilege, many of the revelations that are inevitably made of what they are privy to or covering up should have nuked ''many'' of their cases and perhaps even their careers outright. Danielle Melnick in particular gets multiple lawyers killed because of her CrusadingLawyer shtick, but besides [[spoiler:a crippling gunshot injury]] returns to continue making trouble with her license intact. Disclosure to Accused is also routinely violated, where the accused are immediately told everything they need to know by their lawyer, but somehow never run afoul or hit required information needing to be sent back to the court in response; it effectively stacks the deck in every suspect's favor and puts the onus entirely on the prosecution unless a case is especially abnormal in the episode.

* PenultimateOutburst: Partially subverted in the episode "Life Line".

** The sheer number of times an accused defendant's attorney happens to have particularly case-blowing information, and keeps it hidden against all better judgment, would be staggering. While the defense has to honor the attorney-client privilege, many of the revelations that are inevitably made of what they are privy to or covering up should have nuked ''many'' of their cases and perhaps even their careers outright. Danielle Melnick in particular gets multiple lawyers killed because of her CrusadingLawyer shtick, but besides [[spoiler:a crippling gunshot injury]] returns to continue making trouble with her license intact. There are quite a few cases where they are even exclusively holding onto personal information or a way to approach a cross-examination that come completely out of left field in an attempt to hijack a case in their favor, despite the fact that in real life, both sides are supposed to present basically everything that they may use in a court case ahead of time, including their argument points; many of these situations are so questionably legal that it would make one's head spin, and even the heroes regularly exploit this tactic in kind, to mixed results depending on a judge's individual tolerance. Judges are supposed to, special situations not withstanding, ''prevent'' this exact kind of legal chicanery as the series routinely violates the Disclosure to Accused rule of the law books.

** The sheer number of times an accused defendant's attorney happens to have particularly case-blowing information, and keeps it hidden against all better judgment, would be staggering. While the defense has to honor the attorney-client privilege, many of the revelations that are inevitably made of what they are privy to or covering up should have nuked ''many'' of their cases and perhaps even their careers outright. Danielle Melnick in particular gets multiple lawyers killed because of her CrusadingLawyer shtick, but besides [[spoiler:a crippling gunshot injury]] returns to continue making trouble with her license intact. There are quite a few cases where they are even exclusively holding onto personal information or a way to approach a cross-examination that come completely out of left field in an attempt to hijack a case in their favor, despite the fact that in real life, both sides are supposed to present basically everything that they may use in a court case ahead of time, including their argument points; many of these situations are so questionably legal that it would make one's head spin, and even the heroes regularly exploit this tactic in kind, to mixed results depending on a judge's individual tolerance. Judges are supposed to, special situations not withstanding, ''prevent'' this exact kind of legal chicanery.

* MakeTheDogTestify: In "Who Let the Dogs Out", [=McCoy=] calls [[spoiler: a rabid dog into the courtroom to disprove the witness's claim that it was harmless]].

* MajoredInWesternHypocrisy: In "Promote This!", a high-class Latino woman pretends to be a house servant to avoid suspicion from the cops. Det. Bernard is able to identify just from her attitude while speaking to her that she isn't low-class. When questioned on the stand later as to why she pretended to be house servant, she asserts that it was the police's mistake in seeing her as a "groncho", which is a derogatory term for poor Hispanics and Latinos.

* TriangRelations: Considering that there are 456 episodes, you can bet that every single one of these has appeared at least once.
* [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ubermensch Ubermensch]]: A few throughout the years. They tend to fascinate Dr. Olivet and Dr. Skoda.

** The sheer number of times an accused defendant's attorney happens to have particularly case-blowing information, and keeps it hidden against all better judgment, would be staggering. While the defense has to honor the attorney-client privilege, many of the revelations that are inevitably made of what they are privy to or covering up should have nuked ''many'' of their cases and perhaps even their careers outright. There are quite a few cases where they are even exclusively holding onto personal information or a way to approach a cross-examination that come completely out of left field in an attempt to hijack a case in their favor, despite the fact that in real life, both sides are supposed to present basically everything that they may use in a court case ahead of time, including their argument points; many of these situations are so questionably legal that it would make one's head spin, and even the heroes regularly exploit this tactic in kind, to mixed results depending on a judge's individual tolerance. Judges are supposed to, special situations not withstanding, ''prevent'' this exact kind of legal chicanery.

** Nearly every episode has the defendant testifying. While technically not forbidden, it is something that even the worst defense attorney knows is a bad idea for the very reason frequently depicted--the person is subjected to cross-examination and ends up incriminating themselves either via their attitude or what they say, resulting in their conviction. In the early days of the show this was actually cited if a defendant wanted to testify, with the defense attorney, the judge, and even the DA warning them against this, but as time went on, defendants testified as if this was standard procedure (forgiveable from a storytelling standpoint, as after a whole episode of the crook ready to smugly get away with everything, it's incredibly cathartic to watch [=McCoy=] rip him to pieces on the stand).

* {{Deconstruction}}: Although hardly the first DarkerAndEdgier crime drama, ''Law & Order'' made its name by focusing on being RippedFromTheHeadlines and showing that the good guys [[DownerEnding don't always win]], or in some cases [[TheUnfettered aren't exactly being good guys.]] While the police procedural usually followed fairly standard matters, the District Attorney work consistently gets compromised, heated and even downright raw in their deals if they even make any. And unlike most other series, the characters effectively existed as a platform for the cases, rather than for an ongoing story and development; the personal lives so many dramas focused on were rare and intentionally de-emphasized to show their roles as the various chains holding up the legal system.

* EnhancedInterrogationTechniques: "Vengeance", for example. The police grill a suspect (who tortured and killed four women) for 12 hours before he slips up and accidentally tells them about the storage house where he kept the pictures he took of the naked, abused women. The judge throws it out even though the police repeatedly Mirandized him, claiming that the interrogation technique was too rigorous.
** Det. Green in his first two episodes, "Gunshow" and "Killerz". Granted, he was very gentle to the suspects he was interrogating; however, in both examples he established an atmosphere of coercion that, for some reason, rendered the confessions inadmissible.

** Paul Sorvino's (Det. Cerreta's) second to last appearance (his final appearance as a regular), before being put on a bus, in the episode "Prince of Darkness". [[spoiler: Pretty much every witness involved in the case is ruthlessly murdered by the Colombian mob. Cerreta himself is non-fatally shot by an arm's dealer, who was then murdered in a prison yard. The Colombian mob gets away with the entire crime, especially after tying every single loose end: including the daughter of the victims in the beginning of the episode]].

** In "The Serpent's Tooth", a Russian mobster tells his wife (in Russian) to tell Greevey and Logan that "American cops are pathetic and nobody's afraid of them". The wife says in English that "America's a great country, and anybody can get rich." Greevey and Logan walk away smiling.

** Lieutenant Cragen wore a wire to prove he wasn't; well, sorta kinda. A corruption scandal involving a public official and some police captains and lieutenants involved a trail of tampering evidence which led directly to Cragen. Stone does not want to indict him, so he makes him wear a wire and talk to one of the defendants; however, the defendant suspects that he's wearing a wire, and doesn't say anything incriminatory. Cragen then tells Stone to [[spoiler: send out a false rumor that he has been indicted, and then asks the defendant for a bribe; the defendant then spills everything to Cragen, who then testifies against him in court]].

** Subverted in "God Bless The Child", where parents refuse medical treatment for their daughter due to religious convictions, which results in the daughter's death. Their housekeeper says that [[spoiler: the daughter asked for a doctor a few hours prior to her death; however, because the daughter didn't have direct knowledge that she was going to die, the confession is not admissible]].

** Same thing in "The Secret Sharers". A boy deliberately and willfully premeditates the murder of a drug-dealer: by consulting with his priest, stealing his aunt's gun, stalking the man, and shooting him in the crotch multiple times. However, he invokes the fact that the drug-dealer had raped his sister and asserts that he was protecting his sister's honor, even though the prosecution finds evidence that this wasn't the case. After the jury acquits the boy, this exchange results:
--> '''Stone''': (''to Robinette, when he suggests that Stone is angry at losing'') What I ''do'' mind is that twelve honest citizens knew that he was guilty and still acquitted him.
--> '''Robinette''': Well, they were being flim-flammed by the self-defense.
--> '''Stone''': They ''knew'' that they were being flim-flammed. And they still acquitted him. ...And that's frightening.

* BestServedCold: Referenced in "The Torrents of Greed (Pt. 2)". After being humiliated in court by a mob boss, Stone goes to great lengths to put the boss away. When Robinette calls Stone for seemingly focusing more on payback than justice, this exchange results:
-->'''Stone''': You know, the Russians say revenge is the sweetest passion.
-->'''Robinette''': Yeah. And the Sicilians say it's a meal that's best served cold.

** In the first season two-parter "The Torrents of Greed," an [[spoiler: AffablyEvil Mafia boss (a [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed thinly-veiled version]] of John Gotti) runs a doozy of one on Stone, feeding him false information about a murder the boss ordered and getting Stone to indict him on the basis of their testimony. When the case goes to trial, the boss's attorney melodramatically reveals that all of the evidence against his client is based on perjury and the boss walks. Later, when Stone actually does get ironclad proof tying the boss to the murder, he can't do anything about it because of double jeopardy]].

** "Severance", for example. The police question a suspect (a lawyer), who tells them to solely contact him through his lawyer. Later, the police record the suspect giving a bribe to another woman, and they arrest him for bribery. However, the bribery confession is thrown out because the suspect had said "only contact me through my lawyer". As demonstrated by the page, that line does not apply to police officers; a person may not invoke their right to counsel on any ''future questioning'' by the police. The police had every right to deceive the suspect without [[MirandaRights Mirandizing]] him, provided that they did not coerce the statements.

** Also averted in the first season episode "Sonata for Solo Organ". Greevey and Logan investigate a case of attempted murder when a man is found in the park groggy, bleeding and missing one of his kidneys.
** Another first season aversion is the episode "Out of the Half-Light". In a story based on the infamous Tawana Brawley hoax, Greevey and Logan investigate when an African-American girl [[spoiler: falsely]] claims she was raped and abused by police officers.
** Also averted in the second season episode "Star Struck". Cerreta and Logan investigate when a soap opera actress is severely beaten by an obsessed fan.

** Also seen from Dr. Olivet in "In Memory Of," where she testifies in court [[spoiler: that her client repressed the memory of her father killing a neighbor child until her psyche could "deal with it."]] Olivet tells the court that "most" psychologists think that [[spoiler: repressed memories]] are accurate. This was a popular theory in the 80's and 90's, but is no longer the case, as research has shown that that suggestive questioning by professionals can also lead to the formation of [[spoiler: false memories and it is difficult for the patient to distinguish between real memories and false ones.]]