Casey Novak is a young and focused senior-assistant district attorney who's been with the Manhattan DA's office since 2001. It is revealed in early season five that she graduated from Harvard Law School, as seen on a plaque in her office. While sometimes deeply affected by the horrific crimes she deals with on the job, she does not often reveal her emotions. Although she quickly loses her innocence when dealing with sex crimes, she still shows uneasiness when dealing with the gray areas of human involvement, preferring the letter of the law to the messiness of each individual reality. Nonetheless, Novak has a 71 percent success rate in the cases she prosecutes, whereas the average for prosecutors is 44 percent.