Jim Burgess

Jim Burgess, in his late 50s, is an attorney married to a wealthy woman and father of three grown children. He quickly escaped his small Maine hometown for Harvard Law School, intending to return to Maine for a career helping people. Instead, he moved to Hartford, CT, where he won national fame by winning a senational murder trial and now practices at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, still riding the remnants of his early fame.

Jim is confident and well liked, but also arrogant and self-absorbed. He is close to his younger brother Bob, but also treats him somewhat dismissively, and he has little use for his sister Susan and her son Zach until Zach gets into trouble and needs his help. Jim's well-meaning acts backfire because of his arrogance, exacerbating the situation and eventually resulting in a drunken confession that he, not Bob, caused the accident...