Inside a blandly lighted courtroom, a lawyer stood before packed rows of protesters who had been arrested in September, laying out their options: They could take the prosecution’s offer to have their cases dismissed after six months, or ask for a trial.

The third option was to plead guilty.

“I don’t recommend that as a solution,” the lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, said, drawing laughter from the crowd.

The Occupy Wall Street movement reached a new phase on Thursday, as the first of hundreds of protesters arrested in Manhattan made their initial court appearances — even as over a dozen more were arrested outside the headquarters of Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan after they ignored the police’s order to leave.

While the movement has been seen as fluid and spontaneous, what happened in Manhattan Criminal Court was anything but that. The protesters were brought to a specially designated court, and all the more than 60 arraignments were over in about two hours.