The name of Bayard, an American screenwriter, producer and film director, was relatively obscure until he wrote Within the Law, a melodrama performed in New York at the Eltinge Forty-second Street Theatre at a time when the New York police force was particularly demoralized. The last act, which takes place in a police station and that rolls at the pace of the best police stories, follows three acts of intense action in which one unexpected situation piles on top of another. Although the play is a stirring melodrama, "it may stand as a pitiless arraignment against the men who ask girls to work for thorn at wages on which the girls cannot live; it may stand as an ironic exposure of the way the law is successfully twisted by expensive lawyers to fit rich clients' needs; it may stand for something of a laugh at the expense of the Police Department. But it is safe to say that audiences will not see anything in it but an exciting entertainment of the most vivid kind." (The New York Times)