The legal thriller is generally regarded as a variation on the courtroom drama, which itself has been in existence far longer than is generally recognized. The earliest recorded courtroom drama could be considered to be The Oresteia, a trilogy of tragedies written by the Greek playwright Aeschylus in 458 BCE. The third play in the trilogy, Eumenides, is a courtroom drama in which Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra, is put on trial for the murder of his mother. Orestes is acquitted by the goddess Athena, thus putting an end to a multigenerational saga of familial murder and revenge.

Without ever entirely disappearing, the genre resurfaced in the mid-16th century. The public at the time had an insatiable fascination for particularly scandalous trials, and lawyers often published accounts of actual trials for popular entertainment. During that period, French lawyer François Richer reported that he made a point of structuring his accounts to build suspense and maintain the readers’ interest. At a time when popular entertainment was less ubiquitous than it is now, crime and the law offered a form of dramatic entertainment.

The legal drama returned to popular fiction in the mid-19th century with authors like Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White, The Moonstone) and Charles Dickens (Bleak House).