Paramount+ has handed out a straight-to-series order for Discretion, an eight-episode legal thriller from A24 with Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning starring and executive producing. Kidman plays Sharon, the commanding senior partner. Fanning plays Lenny, the summer associate who figures out what Sharon is sitting on. Production is underway, with Stephan James and Colton Ryan just added to the cast, Matt Shakman directing the first four episodes, and a 2027 premiere on the calendar.
The logline:
Discretion is a legal thriller about a summer associate Lenny at a prestigious Dallas law firm who uncovers a web of NDAs masking a dark truth. When she realizes she signed the same agreement, her discoveries put her in the crosshairs of the firm’s most powerful female partner Sharon (Kidman)—upending their mentor-protégé dynamic and raising the question: who gets to keep secrets, and at what cost.
It’s a good hook. It is also not (entirely) fiction. The specific plot engine here, a firm quietly getting its summer associates to sign away the right to talk in mandatory arbitration/nondisclosure agreements, isn’t a writers’-room invention. It’s the exact fight law students dragged into daylight back in 2018 when Munger Tolles was called out on social media for the practice. That firm changed its policy as a result, and other firms voluntarily did away with the practice. The People’s Parity Project — an activist group for law students and new attorneys — has kept the pressure on the industry. And their tactics have proven successful. But it isn’t a practice firmly in the past — there have been some firms that have held fast, despite complaints, and as recently as last year a high-profile litigation boutique rolled out mandatory arbitration on its associates.
Discretion is based on a short story by author, Chandler Baker (who is also writing and EPing the TV version). And Baker isn’t writing from a research binder. She practiced law for a decade — a corporate attorney who, by her own account, spent that time negotiating “hundreds of NDAs a year” — before she wrote Whisper Network, the 2019 bestseller about the informal warning system women build when the formal channels have been papered shut. She has done the thing the show is about. The dark truth Lenny finds in the drawer is the kind of document Baker used to draft on a Tuesday.
Who gets to keep secrets, and at what cost? Biglaw has been answering that question for years… it just never got Nicole Kidman to read the lines.
Earlier: Which Biglaw Firms Still Require Summer Associates To Sign Mandatory Arbitration Agreements?
Harvard Law School Students Organize #DumpKirkland Campaign Over Biglaw Employment Arbitration Agreements
Biglaw Firm Under Attack (Again) By Law School Students Who’ve Had Enough With Mandatory Arbitration
Elite Boutique Getting Slammed By Associates Over Mandatory Arbitration Agreement
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
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