The Guardian - 1 ª Season

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.