John Grisham’s The Litigators is easily one of his best legal novels. As a lawyer, I’ve enjoyed all of his books, but this one I could hardly put down. David Zinc, a young Harvard graduate, is fed up with 80-hour weeks doing mind-numbing transactional work and quits his 600-lawyer Chicago law firm. After way too much to drink to celebrate his freedom, he ends up with the law firm of Finley and Figg—about as far removed from a major national firm as one can get. Calling them ambulance chasers would give them more status than they had. But he needs some kind of job and ends up working for them. They need help because they think that they are about to hit the big time when a drug, Krayoxx, is blamed for deaths and cardiac injury and they manage to sign up some alleged victims. They have never tried a case in federal court and hardly ever tried one in state court. The two hack lawyers decided that they could ride the coat tails of the big class action products liability lawyers and share in a global settlement.
Everything goes well for a while. They meet with the leader of the consortium of lawyers that are trying to consolidate the cases for trial in Florida. Finley and Figg are looking forward to millions in legal fees. But the defendant drug company hires Zinc’s former firm, which has one of the best trial lawyers in the country. The defense, realizing how incompetent Finley and Figg are, decide to push the weakest of their cases to trial to get a jury verdict that the drug is not dangerous to, at worst, force a much smaller settlement. The plaintiff hot-shots are nowhere to be found when the judge forces a trial. Just before trial, a new, prestigious, study demonstrates that the drug is safe. Finley and Figg try to dismiss the case, but the defense insists that they will seek sanctions for having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending a frivolous lawsuit. Things go downhill rapidly. The plaintiff won’t show up for the trial, one of their experts refuses to testify, and Finley has a heart attack when he gets up to give his opening statement. Next, Figg, who is a recovered(?) alcoholic, goes on a bender and vanishes. So David is left as the only lawyer to continue the trial.
I practiced in Chicago in both federal and state courts, and Grisham brilliantly depicts Chicago law practice from the heights to the depths. His characterizations of the lawyers, clients, and support staff are right on, and you have to care for them, even the duds. And because my wife still works for a major law firm and works that many hours a week and faces the same pressures that Zinc did and because I had to appear in federal court by myself with no federal court experience (although I had tried many courts-martial), I could absolutely sympathize with Zinc. And so will you. Five stars.