The Defense Rests

Matthew Mitchell is a well known defence lawyer. He has never lost a case. He bends the rules where he has to. He takes on a new file. The case concerns the killing of a child. Around the same time somebody new arrives at his office. Her name is Joan Hayes. She is fresh out of law school. She starts as a clerk. She objects to his taking the case and says so plainly. Then she decides to reform him. The pull between the two of them is what the film is built on. Jack Holt, Jean Arthur and Nat Pendleton appear in the seventy minute film, an American production Lambert Hillyer finished in 1934.