Indefensible (2006)

As portrayed on Law & Order, public defenders are generally as scummy as their clients. Yet in this fascinating account of a day in his life as a Bronx court-appointed defense attorney, David Feige makes a persuasive case for the nobility of representing both crooks and the more-than-occasional innocent person caught up in the system — like the guy convicted of sexual assault by a pro-prosecution judge despite a seeming lack of evidence. Both propulsively written and thoughtful (see his discussion of ''an elemental confusion, the same one that pervades the...system — how can a criminal actually be good?''), Indefensible is a revealing look at the sometimes rusty scales of justice.