Law & Order Criminal Attorney Drama For the Defense Gets Series Order

Law & Order fans are used to seeing how the District Attorney’s office goes about taking down criminals. Now, for a change, they’re going to get a seat at the defense table.

The franchise’s latest iteration, titled Law & Order: For the Defense, will follow the attorneys of a criminal defense firm, NBC announced Monday. The drama skipped the pilot stage and received a straight-to-series order.

Per the official release, For the Defense “will put lawyers under the microscope, along with the criminal justice system, with every week delivering the promise of a contemporary morality tale.”

Carol Mendelsohn (CSI) will be showrunner. Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, Arthur Forney, Julie Weitz, Peter Jankowski and Mendelsohn will be executive producers. Universal Television and Wolf Entertainment will produce.

“This new show is exciting for me personally,” Wolf said via statement. “We spent the last 30 years on shows that played offense. Now it will be great to play defense and being able to do it with Carol is an honor and an opportunity for both of us to do television that hasn’t been done before.”

Of course, Wolf refers to the other Law & Order series, which traditionally have looked at crimes from the perspectives of police officers and prosecutors. Two other Law & Orders — SVU and Organized Crime — are currently on the air.

“We can’t wait to bring audiences the latest chapter of Law & Order, which will explore a different angle of the criminal justice system,” added Lisa Katz, president, Scripted Programming, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, also via statement. “We’re excited about Dick Wolf’s perpetually thought-provoking approach as well his collaboration with Carol Mendelsohn, who we have been eager to do a series with for a long time.”