Law-series guru David E Kelley has done the near-unthinkable: He’s gone the ‘reality TV’ way.

TV producer David E. Kelley, an outspoken opponent of “reality” television, has bowed to the genre’s popularity by developing a drama with real lawyers, Daily Variety said in its Wednesday edition.

Kelley, who will serve as a consulting producer, will create a law firm whose members will try real civil cases through binding arbitration overseen by current or former judges, the Hollywood trade paper said. Lawyers will be fired along the way, leaving an eventual winner.

NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., has given the go-ahead to eight episodes of the as-yet-untitled project.

“In success we should be as enlightening as we are entertaining,” Kelley, a former attorney who created the Emmy-winning legal drama “The Practice,” was quoted as saying in Daily Variety. “In failure, we’ll stink.”

Kelley attracted headlines last year by satirizing reality TV during an episode of “The Practice.” He told the paper that he was still not a fan of such shows, especially those “that pander to the lowest common denominator.”

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