Book info

• Title The Litigators
• Author John Grisham
• Year 2011
• Genre Thriller

Street lawyer. Street rules. David Zinc has it all: Big firm, big salary, life in the lawyer's fast lane. Until the day he snaps and throws it all away. Leaving the world of corporate law far behind, he talks himself into a new job with Finley & Figg. A self-styled 'boutique' firm with only two partners, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg are ambulance-chasing street lawyers who hustle nickel-and-dime cases, dreaming of landing the big win. For all his Harvard Law Degree and five years with Chicago's top firm, Zinc has never entered a courtroom, never helped a client who really needed a lawyer, never handled a gun. All that is about to change.

Thoughts

I usually enjoy John Grisham books, and this one had all the hallmarks of a good story but it didn’t quite work for me. I liked the in court dialogue, where things can turn on a knife edge, and it’s all about being smart and playing the long game, but it took an awful long time to get there.

And actually, in all that pre-amble, there really weren’t very many likeable characters. David seemed to be the one most likely to be the hero but even he was a bit off. Finley & Figg were awful, and the bigger corporations appeared to be doing wrong at every turn. And the potential tort plaintiffs weren’t all that inspiring either. I guess it’s a more truthful picture of high stakes lawsuits - that there isn’t really a winner and no one comes out of it looking good, but still.

It reads well, and comes to a happy ending, I was glad that Rochelle and the Burmese family were treated well in the end, but otherwise it wasn’t all that satisfying a story.

Rating: 3 / 5