There is a well-worn theme in legal fiction: small-time good guy lawyer takes down huge and evil corporation, despite the apparently insurmountable odds stacked against him.
Even so, our hero is David Zinc. He is a corporate lawyer who has spent most of the past five years slaving at "something to do with bonds" for Rogan Rothberg, a Chicago firm. He decides enough is enough one morning, dives back into the elevator on the 93rd floor where he works and gets happily, gloriously drunk for the rest of the day. Somehow he ends up at the shoddy, ethically dubious two-man law firm Finley & Figg. The partners at Finley & Figg—all two of them—often refer to themselves as “a boutique law firm.” What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who’ve been in the trenches much too long making way too little. Their specialities, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in.
Desperate for a change, David, a Harvard law graduate, decides to join the "bush leagues" and persuades them to hire him. With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practise much law. An extremely popular drug, Krayoxx, the number one cholesterol reducer for the dangerously overweight, produced by Varrick Labs, a giant pharmaceutical company with annual sales of $25 billion, has recently come under fire after several patients taking it have suffered heart attacks. Wally smells money. A little online research confirms Wally’s suspicions—a huge plaintiffs’ firm in Florida is putting together a class action suit against Varrick. All Finley & Figg has to do is find a handful of people who have had heart attacks while taking Krayoxx, convince them to become clients, join the class action, and ride along to fame and fortune. With any luck, they won’t even have to enter a courtroom!
With its in-depth sight into the lives of small-time lawyers, the Litigators portrays the greed of such firms that handle lawsuits against MNC's for exhorting money out of them. However, that is not all that it has to offer Grisham makes Zinc's personal transformation more convincing than his professional one. Some readers may feel the fairy tale ending clashes with the dark humour of the opening.
Niranjana Murali
Even so, our hero is David Zinc. He is a corporate lawyer who has spent most of the past five years slaving at "something to do with bonds" for Rogan Rothberg, a Chicago firm. He decides enough is enough one morning, dives back into the elevator on the 93rd floor where he works and gets happily, gloriously drunk for the rest of the day. Somehow he ends up at the shoddy, ethically dubious two-man law firm Finley & Figg. The partners at Finley & Figg—all two of them—often refer to themselves as “a boutique law firm.” What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who’ve been in the trenches much too long making way too little. Their specialities, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in.
Desperate for a change, David, a Harvard law graduate, decides to join the "bush leagues" and persuades them to hire him. With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practise much law. An extremely popular drug, Krayoxx, the number one cholesterol reducer for the dangerously overweight, produced by Varrick Labs, a giant pharmaceutical company with annual sales of $25 billion, has recently come under fire after several patients taking it have suffered heart attacks. Wally smells money. A little online research confirms Wally’s suspicions—a huge plaintiffs’ firm in Florida is putting together a class action suit against Varrick. All Finley & Figg has to do is find a handful of people who have had heart attacks while taking Krayoxx, convince them to become clients, join the class action, and ride along to fame and fortune. With any luck, they won’t even have to enter a courtroom!
With its in-depth sight into the lives of small-time lawyers, the Litigators portrays the greed of such firms that handle lawsuits against MNC's for exhorting money out of them. However, that is not all that it has to offer Grisham makes Zinc's personal transformation more convincing than his professional one. Some readers may feel the fairy tale ending clashes with the dark humour of the opening.
Niranjana Murali
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