I just bought my first Smith with a lawyer lock, a 625-8 JM. Fit and finish are good, as you'd expect, but the action was gritty and hard in DA. It looked pretty new, although purchased used; I shot it and found 255 grain LFP hit several inches high and right. In the course of shooting a few dozen rounds, the grit went away and the DA seemed to mellow out or I just got used to it. It seems like whomever owned it before didn't even shoot it enough to bother sighting it in, perhaps because of the DA trigger.
I have three 60s-80s N-frames, but they are blue, so there is no easy comparison to looks. DA on all of these is great, but they are 38 to 53 years old, so have had enough use to be smoothed out.