Paramount+ has handed out a straight-to-series order for Discretion, an eight-episode authorized thriller from A24 with Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning starring and government producing. Kidman performs Sharon, the commanding senior associate. Fanning performs Lenny, the summer time affiliate who figures out what Sharon is sitting on. Manufacturing is underway, with Stephan James and Colton Ryan simply added to the forged, Matt Shakman directing the primary 4 episodes, and a 2027 premiere on the calendar.
The logline:
Discretion is a authorized thriller a couple of summer time affiliate Lenny at a prestigious Dallas regulation agency who uncovers an internet of NDAs masking a darkish reality. When she realizes she signed the identical settlement, her discoveries put her within the crosshairs of the agency’s strongest feminine associate Sharon (Kidman)—upending their mentor-protégé dynamic and elevating the query: who will get to maintain secrets and techniques, and at what value.
It’s a superb hook. Additionally it is not (fully) fiction. The particular plot engine right here, a agency quietly getting its summer time associates to signal away the fitting to speak in necessary arbitration/nondisclosure agreements, isn’t a writers’-room invention. It’s the precise battle regulation college students dragged into daylight again in 2018 when Munger Tolles was called out on social media for the practice. That agency modified its coverage because of this, and different corporations voluntarily did away with the practice. The People’s Parity Project — an activist group for regulation college students and new attorneys — has stored the strain on the business. And their techniques have proven successful. But it surely isn’t a apply firmly prior to now — there have been some corporations which have held fast, regardless of complaints, and as just lately as final 12 months a high-profile litigation boutique rolled out mandatory arbitration on its associates.
Discretion relies on a brief story by creator, Chandler Baker (who can be writing and EPing the TV model). And Baker isn’t writing from a analysis binder. She practiced regulation for a decade — a company legal professional who, by her own account, spent that point negotiating “tons of of NDAs a 12 months” — earlier than she wrote Whisper Network, the 2019 bestseller in regards to the casual warning system girls construct when the formal channels have been papered shut. She has performed the factor the present is about. The darkish reality Lenny finds within the drawer is the sort of doc Baker used to draft on a Tuesday.
Who will get to maintain secrets and techniques, and at what value? Biglaw has been answering that query for years… it simply by no means received Nicole Kidman to learn the traces.
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Regulation, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the perfect, so please join together with her. Be at liberty to electronic mail her with any suggestions, questions, or feedback and observe her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
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