by John Grisham
Chapter Five
LIKE A SNAKE CREEPING THROUGH THE undergrowth, I sneak into the law school well past noon and hours after both of my scheduled classes have broken up. Sports Law and Selected Readings from the Napoleonic Code, what a joke. I hide in my little pit in the remote corner of the library's basement floor.
Booker woke me on the sofa with the hopeful news that he'd talked to Marvin Shankle and the wheels were turning downtown. A certain captain or such was being called, and Mr. Shankle was optimistic the matter could be worked out. Mr. Shankle's brother is a judge in one of the criminal divisions, and if the charges couldn't get dismissed then other strings would be pulled. But there is still no word on whether the cops are looking for me. Booker would make some more calls and keep me posted. Booker already has an office in the Shankle firm. He's clerked there for two years, working part-time and learning more than any five of die rest of us. He calls a secretary between classes, works diligently with his appointment book, tells me about this client and that one. He'll make a great lawyer.
It's impossible to organize thoughts with a hangover. I scribble notes to myself on a legal pad, important things, like, now that I've made it into this building without being spotted, what next? I'll wait a couple of hours here while the law school empties. It's Friday afternoon, the slowest time of the week. Then I'll ease down to the Placement Office and corner the director and spill my guts. If I'm lucky, there might be some obscure government agency which has been spurned by every other graduate and is still offering twenty thousand a year for a bright legal mind. Or maybe a small company has suddenly found the need for another in-house lawyer. At this point, there aren't many maybes left.
There's a legend in Memphis by the name of Jonathan Lake, a graduate of this law school who also could not find employment with the big firms downtown. Happened about twenty years ago. Lake was jilted by the established firms, so he rented some space, hung out a shingle, declared himself ready to sue. He starved for a few months, then crashed his motorcycle one night and woke up with a broken leg at St. Peter's, the charity hospital. Not long afterward, the bed next to him was occupied by a guy who'd also crashed a motorcycle. This guy was all broken up and badly burned. His girlfriend was burned even worse, and died a couple of days later. Lake and this guy got to be friends. Lake signed up both cases. As things evolved, the driver of the Jaguar that ran the stop sign and hit the motorcycle upon which Lake's new clients were riding just happened to be the senior partner for the third-largest law firm downtown. And he was the same guy who'd interviewed Lake six months earlier. And he was drunk when he ran the stop sign.
Lake sued with a vengeance. The drunk senior partner had tons of insurance, which the company immediately began throwing at Lake. Everybody wanted a quick settlement. Six months after passing the bar exam, Jonathan Lake settled the cases for two point six million. Cash, no long-term payouts. Just up-front cash.
Legend holds that the biker told Lake while they were both laid up in the hospital that since Lake was so young and just out of school he could have half of whatever he recovered. Lake remembered this. The biker kept his word. Lake walked away with one point three, according to legend.
Me, I'd be off to the Caribbean with my one point three, sailing my own ketch and sipping rum punch.
Not Lake. He built an office, filled it with secretaries and paralegals and runners and investigators, and got serious about the business of litigation. He put in eighteen-hour days and was not afraid to sue anybody for any wrong. He studied hard, trained himself and quickly became the hottest trial lawyer in Tennessee.
Twenty years later, Jonathan Lake still works eighteen hours a day, owns a firm with eleven associates, no partners, tries more big cases than any lawyer around and makes, according to the legend, somewhere in the neighborhood of three million dollars a year.
And he likes to splash it around. Three million bucks a year is hard to hide in Memphis, so Jonathan Lake is always hot news. And his legend grows. Each year an unknown number of students enter this law school because of Jonathan Lake. They have the dream. And a few graduates leave this place without jobs because they want nothing more than a cubbyhole downtown with their name on the door. They want to starve and scratch, just like Lake.
I suspect they ride motorcycles too. Maybe that's where I'm headed. Maybe there's hope. Me and Lake. a o a a
I CATCH MAX LEUBERG at a bad time. He's on the phone, talking with his hands and cursing like a drunken sailor. Something about a lawsuit in St. Paul in which he's supposed to testify. I pretend to scribble notes, look at the floor, try not to listen as he stomps around behind his desk, tugging at the phone line.
He hangs up. "You got 'em by the neck, okay," he says rapidly to me as he reaches' for something amid the wreckage of his desk.
"Who?"
"Great Benefit. I read the entire file last night. Typical debit insurance scam. " He lifts an expandable file from a corner and falls into his chair with it. "Do you know what debit insurance is?"
I think I do, but I'm afraid he'll want specifics. "Not really. "
"Blacks call it 'streetsurance. ' Cheap little policies sold door to door to low-income people. The agents who sell the policies come around every week or so and collect the premiums, and they make a debit in the payment books kept by the insureds. They prey on the uneducated, and when claims are made on the policies the companies routinely turn them down. Sorry, no coverage for this reason or that. They're extremely creative when conjuring up reasons to deny. "
"Don't they get sued?"
"Not very often. Studies have shown that only about one in thirty bad-faith denials ends up in court. The companies know this, of course, it's something they factor in. Keep in mind, they go after the lower classes, people afraid of lawyers and the legal system. "
"What happens when they get sued?" I ask. He waves his hand at a bug or fly and two sheets of something lift from his desk and drift to the floor.
He cracks his knuckles violently. "Generally, not much.
There have been some large punitive awards around the country. I've been involved with two or three myself. But juries are reluctant to make millionaires out of simple sorts who buy cheap insurance. Think about it. Here's a plaintiff with, say, five thousand dollars in legitimate medical bills, clearly covered by the policy. But the insurance company says no. And the company is worth, say, two hundred million. At trial, the plaintiff's lawyer asks the jury for the five thousand, and also a few million to punish the corporate wrongdoer. It rarely works. They'll give the five, throw in ten thousand punitive, and the company wins again. "
"But Donny Ray Black is dying. And he's dying because he can't get the bone marrow transplant he's entitled to under the policy. Am I right?"
Leuberg gives me a wicked smile. "You are indeed. Assuming his parents have told you everything. Always a shaky assumption. "
"But if everything's right there?" I ask, pointing to the file.
He shrugs and nods and smiles again. "Then it's a good case. Not a great one, but a good one. "
"I don't understand. "
"Simple, Rudy. This is Tennessee. Land of the five-figure verdicts. Nobody gets punitive damages here. The juries are extremely conservative. Per capita income is pretty low, so the jurors have great difficulty making rich people out of their neighbors. Memphis is an especially tough place to get a decent verdict. "
I'll bet Jonathan Lake could get a verdict. And maybe he'd give me a small slice if I brought him the case. In spite of the hangover, the wheels are turning upstairs.
"So what do I do?" I ask.
"Sue the bastards. "
"I'm not exactly licensed. "
"Not you. Send these folks to some hotshot trial lawyer downtown. Make a few phone calls on their behalf, talk to the lawyer. Write a two-page report for Smoot and you'll be done with it. " He jumps to his feet as the phone rings, and shoves the file across the desk to me. "There's a list in here of t
hree dozen bad-faith cases you should read, just in case you're interested. "
"Thanks," I say.
He waves me off. As I leave his office, Max Leuberg is yelling into his phone.
LAW SCHOOL has taught me to hate research. I've lived in this place for three years now, and at least half of these painful hours have been spent digging through old worn books searching for ancient cases to support primitive legal theories no sane lawyer has thought about in decades. They love to send you on treasure hunts around here. The professors, almost all of whom are teaching because they can't function in the real world, think it's good training for us to track down obscure cases to put in meaningless briefs so that we can get good grades which will enable us to enter the legal profession as well-educated young lawyers.
This was especially true for the first two years of law school. Now it's not so bad. And maybe the training has a method to its madness. I've heard thousands of stories about the big firms and their practice of enslaving green recruits to the library for two years to write briefs and trial memos.
All clocks stop when one does legal research with a hangover. The headache worsens. The hands continue to shake. Booker finds me late Friday in my little pit with a dozen open books scattered on my desk. Leuberg's list of must-read cases. "How do you feel?" he asks.
Booker has on a coat and tie, and he's no doubt been at the office, taking calls and using the Dictaphone like a real lawyer.
"I'm okay. "
He kneels beside me and stares at the pile of books. "What's this?" he asks.
"It's not the bar exam. Just a little research for Smoot's class. "
"You've never researched for Smoot's class. "
"I know. I'm feeling guilty. "
Booker stands and leans on the side of my carrel. "Two tilings," he says, almost in a whisper. "Mr. Shankle thinks the little incident at Brodnax and Speer has been taken care of. He's made some phone calls, and has been assured that the so-called victims do not wish to press charges. "
"Good," I say. "Thanks, Booker. "
"Don't mention it. I think it's safe for you to venture out now. That is, if you can tear yourself away from your research. "
"I'll try. "
"Second. I had a long talk with Mr. Shankle. Just left his office. And, well, there's nothing available right now. He's hired three new associates, me and two others from Washington, and he's not sure where they're gonna fit. He's looking for more office space right now. "
"You didn't have to do that, Booker. "
"No. I wanted to. It's nothing. Mr. Shankle promised to put out some feelers, shake the bushes, you know. He knows a lot of people. "
I'm touched almost beyond words. Twenty-four hours ago I had the promise of a good job with a nice check. Now I've got people I haven't met pulling in favors and trying to locate the tiniest scrap of employment.
"Thanks," I say, biting my lip and staring at my fingers.
He glances at his watch. "Gotta run. You wanna study for the bar }n the morning?"
"Sure. "
"I'll call you. " He pats me on the shoulder and disappears.
AT EXACTLY ten minutes before five, I walk up the stairs to the main floor and leave the library. I'm not looking for cops now, not afraid to face Sara Plankmore, not even worried about more process servers. And I'm virtually unafraid of unpleasant confrontations with various of my fellow students. They're all gone. It's Friday, and the law school is deserted.
The Placement Office is on the main floor, near the front of the building, where the administrating occurs. I glance at the bulletin board in the hallway, but I keep walking. It's normally filled with dozens of notices of potential job openings-big firms, medium firms, sole practitioners, private companies, government agencies. A quick look tells me what I already know. There is not a single notice on the board. There is no job market at this time of the year.
Madeline Skinner has run Placement here for decades. She's rumored to be retiring, but another rumor says that she threatens it every year to squeeze something out of the dean. She's sixty and looks seventy, a skinny woman with short gray hair, layers of wrinkles around the eyes and a continuous cigarette in the tray on her desk. Four packs a day is the rumor, which is land of funny because this is now an official nonsmoking facility but no one has mustered the courage to tell Madeline. She has enormous clout because she brings in the folks who offer the jobs. If there were no jobs, there would be no law school.
And she's very good at what she does. She knows the right people at the right firms. She's found jobs for many of the very people who are now recruiting for their firms, and she's brutal. If a Memphis State grad is in charge of recruiting for a big firm, and the big firm gets long on Ivy Leaguers and short on our people, then Madeline has been known to call the president of the university and lodge an unofficial complaint. The president has been known to visit the big firms downtown, have lunch with the partners and remedy the imbalance. Madeline knows every job opening in Memphis, and she knows precisely who fills each position.
But her job's getting tougher. Too many people with law degrees. And this is not the Ivy League.
She's standing by the watercooler, watching the door, as if she's waiting for me. "Hello, Rudy," she says in a gravelly voice. She is alone, everyone else is gone. She has a cup of water in one hand and a skinny cigarette in the other.
"Hi," I say with a smile as if I'm the happiest guy in the world.
She points with the cup to her office door. "Let's talk in here. "
"Sure," I say as I follow her inside. She closes the door and nods at a chair. I sit where I'm told, and she perches herself on the edge of her chair across the desk.
"Rough day, huh," she says, as if she knows everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours.
"I've had better. "
"I talked to Loyd Beck this morning," she says slowly. I was hoping he was dead.
"And what did he say?" I ask, trying to be arrogant.
"Well, I heard about the merger last night, and I was concerned about you. You're the only grad we placed with Brodnax and Speer, so I was quite anxious to see what happened to you. "
"And?"
"That merger happened fast, golden opportunity, etc. "
"That's the same spill I got. "
"Then I asked him when they first notified you about the merger, and he gave me some double-talk about how this partner or that partner had tried to call you a couple of times but the phone was disconnected. "
"It was disconnected for four days. "
"Anyway, I asked him if he could fax me a copy of any written correspondence between Brodnax and Speer and you, Rudy Baylor, regarding the merger and your role after it took place. "
"There's none. "
"I know. He admitted as much. Bottom line is that they did nothing until the merger was over. "
"That's right. Nothing. " There's something cozy about having Madeline on my side.
"So I explained to him in great detail how he had screwed one of our grads, and we got into one huge catfight on the phone. "
I can't help but smile. I know who won the catfight.
She continues, "Beck swears they wanted to keep you. I'm not sure I believe it, but I explained that they should've discussed this with you long before now. You're a student now, almost a graduate, damned near an associate, not a piece of property. I said I knew he ran a sweatshop, but I explained that slavery is over. He cannot simply take you or leave you, transfer you or keep you or protect you or waste you. "
Atta girl. My thoughts exactly.
"We finished the fight, and I met with the dean. The dean called Donald Hucek, the managing partner at Tinley Britt. They swapped a few phone calls, and Hucek came back with the same spin-Beck wanted to keep you but you didn't meet the Tinley Britt standards for new associates. The dean was suspicious, so Hucek said he'd take a look at your resume and transcripts. "
"There's no place for me at Trent & Brent," I say, like a man with many options.
"Hucek feels the same way. Said Tinley Britt would rather pass. "
"Good," I say, because I can think of nothing clever. She knows better. She knows I'm sitting here suffering.
"We have little clout with Tinley Britt. They've hired only five of our grads in the past three years. They've become so big that they can't be leaned on. Frankly, I wouldn't want to work there. "
She's trying to console me, make me feel as if a good thing has happened to me. Who needs Trent & Brent and their beginning salaries of fifty thousand bucks a year?
"So what's left?" I ask.
"Not much," she says quickly. "In fact, nothing. " She glances at some notes. "I've called everybody I know. There was an assistant public defender's job, part-time, twelve thousand a year, but it was filled two days ago. I put Hall Pasterini in it. You know Hall? Bless his heart. Finally got a job. "
I suppose people are blessing my heart right now.
"And there are a couple of good prospects for in-house counsel with small companies, but both require the bar exam first. "
The bar exam is in July. Virtually every firm takes its new associates in immediately after graduation, pays them, preps them for the exam, and they hit the ground running when they pass it.
She places her notes on the desk. "I'll keep digging, okay. Maybe something will turn up. "
"What should I do?"
"Start knocking on doors. There are three thousand lawyers in this city, most are either sole practitioners or in two- or three-man firms. They don't deal with Placement here, so we don't know them. Go find them. I'd start with the small groups, two, three, maybe four lawyers together, and talk them into a job. Offer to work on their fish files, do their collections-"
"Fish files?" I ask.
"Yeah. Every lawyer has a bunch of fish files. They keep diem in a corner and die longer they sit the worse they smell. They're the cases lawyers wish they'd never taken. "
The things they don't teach you in law school.
"Can I ask a question?"
"Sure. Anything. "
"This advice you're giving me right now, about knocking on doors, how many times have you repeated this in the past three months?"
She smiles briefly, then consults a printout. "We have about fifteen graduates still looking for work. "
"So they're out there scouring the streets as we speak. "
"Probably. It's hard to tell, really. Some have other plans which they don't always share with me. "
It's after five, and she wants to go. "Thanks, Mrs. Skinner. For everything. It's nice to know someone cares. "
"I'll keep looking, I promise. Check back next week. "
"I will. Thanks. "
I return unnoticed to my study carrel.