Grisham gets law school faults right

The Rooster Bar
The Rooster Bar

One of the things I didn't expect when I became a lawyer was just how much it would ruin legal fiction for me. So much of what I see and read is so far from reality, it's hard for me not to yell out, "No, it doesn't work like that!"

But what about John Grisham? His latest novel, The Rooster Bar (Doubleday, $28.95) centers on a group of law students at a third-tier, for-profit law school who find themselves on the losing end of a scam. When I began the book, I braced myself for disappointment. Sure Grisham is a former lawyer, but I figured after 30-plus books he would have descended into cliche.

Well, mea culpa, Mr. Grisham. This is a legal book lawyers can read. (It's great for nonlawyers, too.) It is free of major legal gaffes and addresses a problem within the legal profession: the deceptive practices of for-profit law schools.

Grisham's three characters -- Mark, Todd and Zola -- have eagerly entered the Foggy Bottom Law School with hopes of high-paying careers after graduation, dreams encouraged by the school's marketing material and loan officers. By their third year they have learned the hard truth: Law is an elitist profession, and it is practically impossible for students to get any job upon graduation, let alone the mythical six-figure positions that go to graduates from top-tier law schools. Students from little known schools find themselves saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and no prospects.

In Grisham's smartly told tale, a tragedy strikes, and Mark, Todd and Zola decide to begin on a path that was scarily plausible: They drop out of school, go to Washington municipal court, and, without a license, start hustling clients. They assume false names and set up as many legal scams as possible and make as much money as fast as they can.

In the hectic world of traffic and municipal courts, someone could easily pretend to be a lawyer, but they'd be caught eventually.

Grisham (born in Jonesboro) writes that his book was influenced by an article in the Atlantic called "The Law-School Scam," an investigation of for-profit law schools. Grisham's star power shines a spotlight on a real problem in this gratifying and all-too-real book.

Style on 10/29/2017

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