If you’re searching for "Justice," you’ll find it at 9 tonight on WJW Channel 8. Starring Victor Garber of "Alias" fame, executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s new legal drama is sitting on the prime-time Fox docket, preparing to make its case to an audience that regularly sees more lawyers than the nine Supreme Court justices.

"Justice" follows the 8-9 p.m. second-season premiere of "Bones," which stars Emily Deschanel as an author and forensic pathologist teamed with an FBI homicide investigator (David Boreanaz).

So, is "Justice" just another run-of-the-mill courtroom show that’s showing up when television is overrun with crime and legal dramas? Well, it’s a little better than that, although the prime-time jury probably will want to see more evidence before deciding to engage Garber’s superslick lawyer on a permanent basis.

The immediately intriguing "Justice" makes a strong opening argument with an episode that introduces us to celebrity lawyer Ron Trott (Garber), a Los Angeles legal eagle known as "the master of media spin." Ron is terrific on the cable talk-show circuit. He’s a natural in front of the cameras.

The problem is that Ron is too slick to be the lead attorney in a courtroom. Juries hate him.

That’s where Ron’s idealistic partner, Tom Nicholson ("E-Ring" regular Kerr Smith), takes over for the high-priced, high-tech, high-profile defense team. The Nebraska-born Tom is "the all-American face of not guilty." He’s a brilliant litigator. Juries love him.

Rounding out the team are Luther Graves (Eamonn Walker) and Alden Tuller (Rebecca Mader). A former prosecutor, the politically ambitious Luther has an uncanny ability to get inside the district attorney’s head and anticipate courtroom strategy. Alden is the forensics expert and a cross-examination specialist.

We’ve seen plenty of lawyers like Trott, Nicholson, Tuller & Graves (TNT & G for short). We’ve seen the real thing in action during any number of headline-making murder trials. You’ve seen them shouting at each other on those cable talk shows that endlessly dissect and comb through every detail of media-circus cases.

You’ve seen their faces. Now Bruckheimer, the executive producer of the CBS crime dramas "CSI" and "Without a Trace," takes you behind the cable chatter and into the ego-driven game plans of grin, spin and win. It’s all about the process. In essence, "Justice" wants to do for all-star defense teams what "CSI" does for forensic investigators - show you how it’s done with all the bells and whistles, all the toys and technology, all the resources and resolve.

Like most Fox dramas and unlike most trials, the sizzling "Justice" moves at a speed suggesting the proverbial house afire. The series opens with an episode about TNT & G being hired to defend a Malibu man accused of murdering his wife and dumping the body in the family pool.

The prosecution claims that, in a fit of jealousy, the husband turned homicidal and repeatedly smashed his wife’s skull with a golf club. Ron, Tom, Luther and Alden contend that the unfaithful wife slipped twice, hitting her head and falling into the pool.

We watch Ron spin the case in the crucial early steps, creating a favorable impression of their client. We watch Luther dissect the prosecutors’ case, anticipating the motive they’ll attempt to hang around the defendant’s neck. We watch Alden build a forensics model that the jury will accept. And we watch Tom through the all-important process of jury selection, all the way through to closing arguments.

Style is every bit as important as substance with both these lawyers and with Fox dramas, so the jittery "Justice" is packed with crisp dialogue, quick-cut edits, ever-swerving camera work, showy visual effects, gadgetry and gimmicks. The series seems to have been filmed by a camera operator with a perpetual case of the shakes. Either that or Bruckheimer constructed these sets on the rolling deck of a storm-tossed ocean liner.

The final gimmick each week will be a sequence showing what really happened at the crime scene. In this case, did she fall or was she deep-sixed by a 6-iron? Was their client guilty or innocent? And does it matter on the courtroom stage where win-at-all-costs legal tactics collide with a feed-the-beast media frenzy.

"Justice" scores its share of law-and-disorder points in tackling the legal system, but it’s equally as tough on the media. Ron is a regular on a slimy TV talk show called "American Crime." It will look skin-crawlingly familiar. I realize we’re far removed from the prime-time days of "Perry Mason," "The Defenders," "Judd for the Defense" and "Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law," so, in this post-O.J. world, no producer is going to mold a legal drama without a heavy dose of cynicism. But will viewers come back, week after week, for something that inhabits a corner of the world this relentlessly cynical?

There is, after all, a fine line between entering a heavy dose of cynicism into evidence and entering the realm of the heavy-handed.

And will the formula start to dilute after a couple of weeks? This clearly can’t be judged on the basis of one episode, even though tonight’s premiere makes an impressive bid to court viewers with winning performances and robust storytelling.

While you get to the conclusion of the first episode harboring more than a few reasonable doubts about "Justice," the rookie drama has more than earned a (what else?) trial period.