The Street Lawyer

The Street Lawyer is a legal thriller by the American writer John Grisham, published in 1998. It was his ninth novel, and it is less a puzzle about a crime than the account of a lawyer changing his mind about what his profession is for.

The hostage taker is a man who identifies himself only as Mister, and the demand he makes is not for money but for information about an eviction. He is shot by a police marksman before he gets an answer, and Michael Brock, who was one of the people held in the office, is left with his blood on him and with the question he was asking.

Brock begins to investigate, and what he finds takes him to the Fourteenth Street Legal Clinic and to its founder, Mordecai Green, who spends his days representing people with no money against the city and against the agencies that are supposed to help them. Once Brock knows what his own firm has done, he has to decide what he is prepared to give up, and a confidential file in his possession means the decision is not only about his salary.