Kanzlei Liebling Kreuzberg (2024)

Newly qualified lawyer Lisa Liebling returns to her hometown of Berlin after completing her law degree. She unexpectedly gets the chance to join the law firm of her grandfather, Robert Liebling, who died 18 years ago. But Dr. Talia Jahnka, the last colleague of his still at the firm, is initially not pleased about taking a newcomer into the practice. In recent years, she had steered the firm toward success and profit. Lisa, on the other hand, like her grandfather before her, is more concerned with the worries and problems of ordinary people in Kreuzberg than with high legal fees. Caught between the two are legal assistant Senta Kurzweg and young lawyer Cem Oktay. Lisa’s first case causes tension. She represents the senior citizen Saffermann, who is challenging a ban from his regular café. The café owner had banned him because he had directed discriminatory remarks at a customer while sitting in his usual spot. Lisa learns from the café owner, Mai Ninh Phan, that her parents have a problem with Alexander Dietz, an alleged rent dodger who has not paid rent for a year. Lisa visits Dietz to see the situation for herself and learns that he stopped paying rent because of an electrical problem in the apartment. When she returns with an expert, it turns out that Dietz is not only a trained electrician but has also tampered with an electrical panel. In the ensuing court case, Dietz loses, but remains unrepentant, pointing to his impending personal bankruptcy. This would mean that Mai’s parents could not recover the rent they were owed. To help Saffermann and Mai’s parents, a financial solution has to be found for Dietz. He had ended up in this precarious situation because his wife had recently died and his company had offered only reduced-hours work. To give his son a reasonably normal life, he had begun speculating in the financial markets and lost all his savings and income to a dubious company operating a Ponzi scheme. Lisa recognizes his plight, makes a podcast on the subject with Mai and Dietz, gathers contact details for other victims, and wins her first case. A class action is approved, and Jahnka, her colleague at the firm, now accepts Lisa and changes her doctrine regarding the firm’s future direction. Lisa is welcomed as a full-fledged member of the Liebling law firm. Meanwhile, Hans Saffermann is sitting in his usual spot at Mai’s café when she discovers that the newly delivered dishwasher is defective. He offers to wash the dishes by hand, as in the old days.