Welcome to Woodbridge Reads

2009-09-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

Let's get started! First order of business...the book. Here's a summary of The Associate by John Grisham from Powell's Books (www.powells.com)

Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father's small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential. But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn't want — even though it's a job most law students can only dream about. Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed. With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains — from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle's "cubicle" at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country — and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.

If you've read the book, (or even if you haven't...yet,) here's a discussion topic:

Grisham describes the bill-or-die existence of new hires at a prestigious Wall Street law firm. When Kyle questions the ethics of charging a client $2,400 for a two-hour lunch, a partner growls "Guess what happens if they don't spend the amount they budget, if their legal fees fall short? Their in-house lawyers monitor our billings, and if our numbers are low, they call up and raise hell. What are we, the lawyers, doing wrong? Aren't we properly protecting them? The point is, they expect to spend the money. If we don't take it, then it screws up their budgets, they get worried, and maybe they start looking around for another firm, one that will work harder at billing them. You follow?"

What a lame, self-justifying rant!

Here's the question: What do you think about law firms who wildly overbill their wealthy client companies? Does it matter that the companies in question may have their own ethical lapses?