Tue, Sep 25, 2001
Corporate lawyer Nick Fallin is doing community service as a child advocate to satisfy part of his criminal sentence. He figures he'll do his time and get back to his life until his first case hits too close to home. He encounters a family torn apart and then his human side when he can't bring himself to just play the game and move on. But the distraction may derail his promising corporate career.
Tue, Oct 2, 2001
To hold Hunter's lawsuit together against a recalcitrant pharmaceutical company Nick has to placate a plethora of competing interests. But in the end it all comes down to whether Hunter will testify that his father murdered his mother. Child advocate James Mooney has his hands full managing a 12 year old who wants nothing more than to be with his brother, even if that means going to prison.
Tue, Oct 9, 2001
Nick Fallin takes the case of Lawrence Neal, a young boy who is normal except for a spinal condition that landed him in a wheelchair. When his mother is sentenced to jail for prostitution, Social Services advises locking him up in the Ryan institution which is filled with juvenile mental patients. Larry wants to stay with his stepfather, but he has a criminal record. Nick's last trump card is pressing the unsuspecting biological father, but that backfires. Nick's friends, industrialist Bart Shell and his kids, Nick's ambitious ex-lover Rachel and her traditionalist brother, are in a bitter fight of corporate control of the family business.
Tue, Oct 16, 2001
Nick wants to handle the case of a factory in trouble, which needs to reorganize or shut down. Burton Fallin refuses to accept the client, allegedly because there's no profit in it and risk of face loss, but Nick insists and finds the real reason is a family grudge. Nick is offered a way out of his 1500 hours community sentence, as his 'spoiled' MO hardly squares with the overworked public office. While he considers it, he handles the case of April Evans, who claims to be raped by her cop stepfather Al Sandro, who denies abusing her or her mother, who sides with him. Nick finds out the truth.
Tue, Oct 23, 2001
Nick is not amused to be maneuvered into taking risks with gay judge Smirnovitch for his charge Ethan Ritter (16). The cocky gay prostitute isn't wanted by his own family but the competent gay couple that even wants to adopt him was refused by a bigot judge. Nick goes the extra miles in every direction, for once helped by the social services dragon.
Tue, Oct 30, 2001
Nick is assigned the case of teenage girl Dina Jameson, whose violent past means the couple interested in adopting her kid sister Lisa (also Nick's client) won't take her in the bargain. Dina deliberately seduces Nick, whom she made believe she was an adult, the previous night, to blackmail him, but some digging turns up the girls' relevant family secrets. Meanwhile Alvin Masterson fails to renew county grants for the law firm's exclusive service for minors, so he must find alternative private funding and/or accept adult clients under state subsidy terms.
Tue, Nov 6, 2001
Nick successfully pleads the case of gentle, mentally-challenged Malcolm Dempsy (25), whose overbearing mother demands custody because he was tricked into trading an expensive stereo system for a cellphone by his dodgy neighbor and "friend", drug pusher Freddie Paddock. He insists on defending the boy when seen leaving the dealer's apartment after the scum was murdered by gunshot, but no gun is found. Nick risks his parole to get help from his own slick former 'quality'-dealer Colin Bennett. Dad considers sacrificing Jake to avoid claims the firm can't survive after Jake's car fatally hits Furnari, another lawyer, while on his cell phone. Jake finds out the truth about victim, widow, lover and firm shark.
Top-rated
Tue, Nov 20, 2001
Burton Fallin asks in vain for Nick's help in the case of former CEO Harry Josephs with terminal cancer, whose business partners, the Hopeson brothers, ruthlessly invoke a contract clause allowing them to sell back his shares at a measly historical price. Nick gives priority to the case of incurably sick Lesley Walker, who needs a legal guardian to be eligible for a donor heart. Her former foster parents refuse to adopt her at their own children's expense, but Nick considers filing for custody himself. Burton's lover makes him promise to introduce her to Nick, who never forgave him being an absent father and husband, but is stood up.
Tue, Nov 27, 2001
Nick reluctantly takes the case of penniless legal services secretary Barbara Ludzinski, whose teenage son Russ was arrested for possession of drugs found in his car. The knave stubbornly refuses a deal to protect his accomplices. Nick resorts to a trap after a neighborhood boy dies from some of the bad ecstasy batch. The Fallins represent a toy company which can't sell out to a Japanse firm without permission from its main character's creator, Fulton Trout, who can't handle children complaining to him about copyright-related restrictions, such as a school mural. As part of an flood of tenant eviction cases, James has to defend a blatant Neonazi against his Jewish landlord.
Tue, Dec 11, 2001
Nick is appalled when Louisa 'Lulu' Archer, a lawyer Burton was prepared to hire, opts for the job in free legal services, where Alvin immediately makes her his 'senior'. In every stage of their first common client, immigrant restaurant owner Ahmad Hassan being victim of assaults on the business and his daughter Salaam by schoolmate Perry Hudson, Nick proves himself far more competent. Meanwhile Burton's partner Larry Hines has defected to a bigger law firm and tries to lure most staff away with him, even Nick, as well as their accounts.
Tue, Dec 18, 2001
Nick prepares to transfer to the other law firm next week, but first has an affair with Meghan Barstow, who will work under his supervision there. Nick pleads the case of Hunter Reed, who wants to live with his doting, devoted father, schizophrenic Dr. Thomas Reed, who successfully sued the manufacturer of pills which made him go lose control and kill Hunter's mother, rather then his well-meaning grandparents. Alvin grudgingly agrees to plead for his mythomaniac ex Meryl Dimetrio, who claims she was fired for reporting a manufacturing error in the brakes produced by a firm represented by Burton himself.