Courtroom drama has been dependable television for seventy years, and it has taught audiences a version of civil court that would not survive one afternoon in a real Nevada courtroom. That is not a complaint about the genre. An hour of television has to compress a process that runs for months, and compression is what makes it watchable. It is still worth knowing which parts got cut, particularly for viewers who end up inside the system themselves.
Start with the clock. A civil case in Clark County opens with a complaint and an answer, then spends most of its life in discovery: written questions, document production, depositions taken in conference rooms with no audience and no music. Motions are filed and decided largely on paper. Months pass in which nothing happens that a camera would find useful. The trial that television treats as the whole story is the stage most cases never reach, because the majority are settled or resolved by motion before that point.
Then there is the surprise. Television runs on the witness nobody expected and the document produced mid testimony. Real civil procedure is built specifically to prevent that. Parties have to disclose their witnesses and exhibits in advance, on deadlines the court sets and enforces, and the usual consequence of holding something back is that you do not get to use it. The dramatic ambush is less a legal tactic than a screenwriting device.
The last difference is specialization. On screen, one attorney handles the murder, the custody fight and the corporate merger in the same season. In practice the work divides, and a firm's published practice list is the honest description of what it actually does. O'Reilly Law Group, a Las Vegas firm established in 1972 publishes a list running from litigation and personal injury to gaming and administrative law, real estate, probate and business matters, which is a useful illustration of how narrowly the profession is carved up in reality.
For viewers, the practical version is short. If you are served with a complaint, the window to respond is real and it starts from the date of service rather than the day the envelope gets opened. If you are following a case in the news, the timeline you see on air is compressed for the same reason the fictional ones are, and the quiet months between hearings are where the outcome is usually determined.