The film's leading lady Cher said of her casting, performance, and characterization: "I read the script and really, really liked it, but I was also very intimidated until I jumped into it. I know nothing about the law, so I chose to play the aspects of Kathleen's character that I knew, that I could relate to, and then the legal terms and language just fell into place. I used them as if I'd been using them all my life. The easy part was being in front of the jury. The hard part was acting well enough to make people believe you know what you're doing. You have to make them believe that you have been a student, gone to college, gone to law school, and have been doing this for eight years. That's the difficult part".