The Street Lawyer | John Grisham | What becomes of the street lawyer?

The Street Lawyer | John Grisham | On the right Frequency

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The Street Lawyer

	The Street Lawyer John Grisham Delta, 2005 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 1053 reviews view larger image
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What becomes of the street lawyer?

Michael Brock is a young lawyer on his way to the top. Only after he is held hostage by a guy named mister does he begin to reevaluate his life. Deciding he can't go on with his greedy lawyer ways and getting the chance to redo his life after the hostage situation, he quits his job and begins working at a legal clinic for the homeless. When one morning he finds a file on his desk and has to make one of the biggest decisions of his life. Should he destroy his old firm or destroy his own life.

I really enjoyed this book; it was exciting from the first page to the last. I loved that the most exciting part of the entire book was in the first chapter and that in reading this book you get a first hand look at what it is like being rich and also what it is like being homeless.

Anyone who has read any other John Grisham book and has liked it would enjoy this book. Or anyone who likes books about life changing events and books about how people deal with change would also like this book.

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On the right Frequency

In the John Grisham catalogue, The Street Lawyer is viewed as one of his lesser works. I am surprised as it impacts me the most, and recently discovered why. While watching Frequency with Dennis Quaid, I took note of the many possible plot holes that existed. Yet when reading a review of the movie by film-critic Roger Ebert, I was struck that he left these "important" issues to the side and focused on the heart of the film, a father and son who almost supernaturally communicate across time to save the father's life and bring the two back together. The film worked by keeping the father and son relationship in the forefront, thus allowing Ebert to remember his father. The Street Lawyer works not only as a light reading page-turner but also as a novel that focuses on the homeless and successfully keeps them in the forefront of all action that goes on.
Lawyer Michael Brock, owed to crisis, leaves his salary and future at a prestigious law firm to dedicate his talents to fighting for the rights of the homeless in Washington D.C. Along the way we meet Claire Brock, who will go the way of failed first marriages, Ruby, a possible replacement, Mordecai, the larger than life lawyer for the homeless who leads Michael's new thread bare law firm, and we get to know the homeless' plight through visits to D.C. shelters, conversations of poor municipal care, and a well-conceived plot involving an illegal ouster of rent-paying squatters that causes...well, I won't spoil it for the new reader.
What is revealed, almost between the lines, is Grisham's friendliness towards religion. The homeless are often fed by sympathetic churches, Ruby is the daughter of a minister, and the vice of greed is shown for what it is, a selfishness that hurts others and is often confused as a virtue ("Weren't we just chasing money? Why did we work so hard; to buy a richer rug, and older desk?"). Most telling is Brock's crisis experience. When visiting the bodies of a homeless family in the morgue, we read, "I closed my eyes and said a short prayer of mercy and forgiveness. Don't let it happen again, the Lord said to me." (pages 113-114 of the 1998 paperback edition) This line, that his new work is a calling from God, lifts the book to a new realm. I recently talked to a lawyer friend of mine who teaches human rights, has participated in human rights conferences around the world, and has even counted votes with Jimmy Carter. She said the non-religious approach to human rights holds that human rights and respect are essential to maintain world and regional harmony. Yet this essential item is a construct rather than an absolute, and falls away if one does not agree that harmony is essential, that is, one might place a personal, political or religious viewpoint above harmony, making it his or her absolute, even if this involves killing. Michael's calling is an absolute. If God did indeed say it, then working to better the condition of the homeless results since people are made in His image, an absolute that would even cause Michael to leave it all and work for little to make their lives better. That is not to say that the novel becomes "Christian", far from it. But the biblical worldview is there, and this gives the book substance.
The Street Lawyer does have weaknesses. Its short chapters are designed to build sympathy for the homeless, while painting less than flattering pictures of those who should be doing more (i.e. anyone not homeless). Michael's last chapter romance with Ruby almost seems tacked on, a sort of "end with something upbeat here chapter", and certainly not all anti-homeless legislation is Republican. As well, my father was a gruff, 20-year police veteran who detested, and I mean DETESTED, lawyers. I don't think that Sgt. Gasko, when armed with a warrant to search Michael's apartment, would respond so previously to Michael's threats, but would have delighted in legally taking apart his apartment and enjoying a lawyer's ranting and raving at the same time. I know my father would have loved that opportunity. But the novel works by building on a biblical worldview where people do have merit, keeping the homeless the main thing, and giving me a hero whose exploits, no matter how fictional, awaken in me a desire to do something more for those whose voices society chooses not to hear.

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Good read

The plot is quite good. However, the style and the overall structure are somewhat weaker that in later Grisham's stories. Still well worth the time.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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