After an attractive redhead introduces herself to prominent criminal defense attorney Nicholas Kristos, in the nave of the Greek Orthodox Church and later claims he attacked and raped her, the county prosecutor puts ethics aside in his effort to end the career of his chief nemesis. Jonah Callahan takes on the defense of his law partner, only to be hammered, a week before the rape trial, by a personally devastating and indisputable fact-so unchangeable it prohibits him from continuing as the trial attorney. In his stead, locally infamous attorney Craig Phillips, reinstated to the practice after a four year disbarment, takes over Kristos' defense, with the added hope of rehabilitating his own reputation.