Lawyer Up Review

Decks of cards, individual cases packed with intrigue, evidence, suspicion, beautiful artwork, and the determined prosecution and the stalwart defense. Enter: Lawyer Up (2021), designed by Samuel Bailey, Mike Gnade; illustrated by Vincent Christiaens, Sean Simmons, and Matt Zeilinger; and published by Rock Manor Games. Lawyer Up is a visually stunning, well-laid out, and beautifully intentioned dueling game about courtroom dramas. If you ever wanted to be in the position of a district attorney or defending council at your very own tabletop, this may be the game for you. But will Lawyer Up’s mechanics live up to the task of transforming the tension of a genuine courtroom that we have all come to love and expect from primetime television to the tabletop? Well, read on for the verdict from your peer gamers and favorite reviewers at Corax & Coffee.

PeteSteele: Hey, Sarah and Ms. Shaw, do you want to watch a movie? 

SarahVasa: Pete, don’t you have to write a review of Lawyer Up for Corax & Coffee?

PeteSteele: I do, but I need to get inspired. So . . . movie?

Ms.Shaw: Isn’t your review due today?

PeteSteele: But . . . inspiration.

SarahVasa & Ms.Shaw: . . . 

PeteSteele: I need to watch A Few Good Men to get into the courtroom drama mindset for the review. Watch it with me? I will make popcorn and bake mini-pizza movie snacks.

SarahVasa & Ms.Shaw: Sold.

PeteSteele: Many people love a good courtroom drama either in the form of a movie, John Grisham novel, or TV series. Consumers of courtroom dramas live for the tension, the yelling, and the salacious side stories. And then there’s the potential for a litigator to go off at the judge at any moment, in the name of justice . . . or corruption. All these pieces make for an explosive, tantalizing, and titillating courtroom procedure! In the tabletop card game Lawyer Up (2021), you can experience . . . something . . . sort of, but not particularly at all, like a steamy and intense courtroom drama right on your tabletop.

Within the base game of Lawyer Up you will find: 26 base defense cards, 26 base prosecution cards, 73 art forgery (case #00) cards, 90 murder (case #01) cards, 7 double-sided judge cards, 12 double-sided juror cards, 4 reference cards, 2 influence dials, 12 bias tokens (six types with two of each), 6 objection tokens (3 red and 3 blue), 2 sidebar tokens (1 red and 1 blue), 2 discredit tokens, 2 dice for solo play (1 red and 1 blue), and a rulebook.

Lawyer Up is a two-player courtroom drama card-based game where one player becomes the district attorney, while the other player takes on the role of the defending counsel. After players choose a specific case deck to play, each game begins with a discovery phase where players draft evidence cards to support their side of the case and bury evidence cards that may help the opposing counsel (their opponent). 

After the discovery phase, the trial commences where both players call witnesses, playing argument cards and evidence cards they drafted into their examinations. Each case (with two in the base game and additional cases available in various expansions) has slightly different winning conditions depending on the nature of the case. The counselor with the most convincing arguments and compelling evidence, based on icon matching relative to each witness, is most likely to get the verdict from the jury that they desire.

During the trial, when examining a witness, the two players, or counselors, ensure their legal arguments and presented evidence makes “sense” by chaining played cards together with at least one icon matching the bias symbols on the previously played cards starting with the current witness being examined. There are six bias symbols (some or all of which may be present on a given witness, argument, or evidence card): evidential (indicated by a magnifying glass icon), logical/factual (indicated by a brain icon), emotional (indicated by a heart icon), reputation/mortality (indicated by a thumbs up icon), bureaucratic/justice (indicated by a scales icon), and corruption/nefarious (indicated by a skull icon). In addition to playing argument and evidence cards, each counselor can play procedure cards, request a sidebar with the judge, or object to an argument that is made by the opposing counsel, however, this may impact the favor of the judge. It is important to keep in mind that for an entire trial (or game) each counselor only has three objections, so they must be used wisely.

Through the examination of each witness, counselors generate influence (a type of round-based victory points). At the end of each round, which is determined by the end of the questioning of a given witness, the two opposing counselors compare their influence points for the round. Whichever counselor has greater victory points is the winner of the round. The winner then subtracts the opposing counsel’s number of influence points from their own and takes the remaining influence points to sway jury members one way or another.

Once all witnesses brought forth by both the prosecution and the defense have been cross examined, the game ends. The winner of the game, prosecution or defense, is dependent on how many jurors needed to be swayed, depending on the specific case that players decided to play. See scenario-specific rules cards for more information.

Lawyer Up is, in fact, a long, drawn out, eyes-on-your-cards, mentally taxing, icon-matching grind. But does any of that make it fun to play? Well, not really.

While there certainly are cards in the game that try to add that flavor of primetime courtroom drama, the reality is most cards, even the more dramatic cards, are best leveraged when players think hard about the evidence, argument, and procedure cards they have to play on a particular witness, and then think about what their opponent might do to counter said arguments, evidence, and points of procedure, all while playing a grueling icon dance, painstakingly trying to get a legal, icon-based leg up on the opposing counsel.

After examining a particular witness, in the next round you’ll do it all over again with another witness, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then, depending on the length of the game you’re playing, potentially another, and another, and another, and another after that: Trying. To. Match. Icons. To. Simulate. A. Legal. Point. Or. Argument. Building. A. Case. A. Few. Cards. At. A. Time. Without. A. Real. Executable. Plan. In. Place. Because. Of. The. Sheer. Randomness. Of. The. Cards. That. You. Will. Have. Access. To. At. Any. Given. Time.

Also, the game is slow. Monotonous. Random. Frustrating. And . . . drama-free.

You will build a case in your mind based on the cards that you know you have in your deck, believing you might be able to match icons and engine-build your way to some brilliant legal bulwark . . . only to not get the cards you need that round. And there is nothing for it but to hope for a different outcome in the next round. You are building a legal case as a house of cards . . . that MIGHT stay propped up against your opponent . . . or the cards may just not lean up against one another at all. Too bad. Better luck next case (game). 

SarahVasa: I found the game was neither engaging nor immersive.

PeteSteele: There you have it, folks. It’s not that Lawyer Up was overly complicated to learn.

SarahVasa: Nope.

PeteSteele: It’s not that Lawyer Up has an overabundance of things to remember.

SarahVasa: Nope.

PeteSteele: It’s not that it was less-than-visually-stunning to look at, underdeveloped as a game, or less than a stunning labor of love.

SarahVasa: Nope, nope, and nope.

PeteSteele: It’s just that . . . it is just a giant bummer to actually play.

SarahVasa: YUP.

PeteSteele: From an aesthetic standpoint, Lawyer Up is absolutely gorgeous. The box art is both elegant and dramatic. With depictions of oak, cherry, and other wood furniture you would find in a federal courtroom funded with big government dollars. The cards have elegant justice seals making us for a minute, just for one minute, actually believe that the ideals of a blind and fair justice in our judicial system are actually successfully carried out. *sigh* The minute is up. 

The iconography and text on the front of each card is dense, to be sure, but quite clear, and once you understand the rules, it is very clear it does not take long to understand how the iconography impacts play. In fact, I think the Lawyer Up production artwork is a true exemplar of how to make dense information on cards be both aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things to me about Lawyer Up isn’t entirely about the game play at all, but the fact that it is abundantly clear that this production was not rushed in any way. This game is clearly a labor of love that the designers, artists, publisher, and others spent several years to get it to where it is. And still, for me, it just misses the mark of being something that I enjoy playing. Typically when a game doesn’t work for me, I am able to say, as easy as it is to say in hindsight, “if you had done this, that, and the other thing, the game might have worked better.” But in the case of Lawyer Up, the designers were trying to do something that is inherently so difficult to simulate—a courtroom trial as an engaging card game—that I really don’t have any clear or useful notes for them other than to say “try again,” which is infuriating. I guess . . . maybe this would work better as a card building game? Maybe they tried that and it didn’t work. I don’t know.

All this being said, we certainly do want to commend the designers and artists behind Lawyer Up for the diversity portrayed through various genders and people from different ethnicities represented across witnesses and judges alike. We thought this was very well done and should serve as a model for all tabletop games.

I was so excited about Lawyer Up when I first heard about it. I wanted to love it. After playing it once, I was desperate to love it. After playing it twice, I was desperate to like or enjoy it. I played it more. I played the solo variant. I read and reread the rules to make sure I was playing correctly. I looked at online forums to see if there were any rules modifications that would make the game more enjoyable. I thought about the game. I dreamt about it. Seriously, I had dreams about playing this game. I looked at the expansions (check out Lawyer Up: Witch Trial and/or Lawyer Up: Godfather, if you are so inclined) to determine if they corrected some of the issues of the mechanics of the base game. They did not. I would walk up to the game sitting on my gaming table, out and ready to play, and every time I approached the table I would start to think, “Oh, maybe later. After I’ve had a nap. When I feel more focused. When the rules spontaneously change.” I wanted to want to like playing the game. I just . . . didn’t. It’s so incredibly beautiful. So incredibly ambitious. So incredibly, well, incredible in almost every way except in the ways that makes it a game that I actually want to play. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that there is no way that I can genuinely endorse Lawyer Up.

For us, it’s just not an experience that is similar enough to a courtroom drama that it is worth . . . experiencing. In addition, Lawyer Up takes up too much table space to be played in a coffee shop. This is not a terrible thing, just be aware. We give Lawyer Up our Seal of Nonchalance. Not a game for us, but maybe for you. We absolutely recommend trying it before you buy it. On the other hand, we also recommend looking at it, even if you don’t play it, simply to appreciate how much time, effort, and attention went into this game. No matter what, you can enjoy the artwork and the flavor text. Maybe you’ll even enjoy playing the game.

However, if you happen to love icon matching, don’t mind randomness, and/or love gorgeous courtroom drama photos, you might get more mileage out of this game than we did, especially for the quite reasonable MSRP of $40. Nothing about this game is absolutely terrible . . . ultimately, we just think that it does not work mechanically. 

PeteSteele: So, Sarah & Ms. Shaw, what do you think of my review?

SarahVasa: Did you say, “tantalizing and titillating?”

PeteSteele: Yes, yes, I did. What do you think? Maybe the new slogan of Corax & Coffee?

SarahVasa & Ms.Shaw:  . . . You want the answer?

PeteSteele: I want the truth!

SarahVasa & Ms.Shaw: You can’t handle the truth!

Lawyer Up (2021) earns the Seal of Nonchalance.