The Law Will Not Save You

 “Rogue Lawyer” by John Grisham, 2016

We can’t always read stuffy books filled with footnotes and long indexes.  Like many of Grisham’s fiction books, this one will tell you more about law enforcement and the court system than some tomes. You see it’s not all made-up.  A law school should have a Grisham seminar for reality training.  This book actually has a ‘questions for discussion’ section at the end that centers on legal issues.  The story is similar to the Lincoln Lawyer, Goliath and Better Call Saul streaming series, this about a rowdy, smart, street-wise, criminal defense attorney who takes down the big guys – mostly. 

Written in 2016 it features a ‘rogue’ who offices out of a well-appointed van, has a thuggish bodyguard and paralegal, mostly defends ne'er-do-wells and nearly always wins, unlike the real world.  The 2005 book “Lincoln Lawyer’ was first about this kind of attorney, but they all inherit the noir genre of detective fiction.  It’s a class change from gumshoes to attorneys.  The gentrification of noir? 

If you spent too much time in the legal community like I did, this is catnip. Grisham engages in the ‘noir’ political crisis’s of the day – sex-trafficking, bloody and erroneous SWAT raids, lazy and corrupt police, ‘tough on crime’ jackass politicians, false accusations of murder, stupid prejudices, the drug war, vulnerable children, and so on.  

The usual lawyerly contradictions abound.  Winning is the only thing.  Some clients are idiots or plain dangerous.  Forum and judge shopping and possible bribes are standard. Skirting or being held in contempt is a constant risk. Witness and juror tampering is possible. Extensive voir dire and jury selection is a necessity. Attorney-client privilege makes you do things you don’t want to do. Courtroom skills are essential.  Prison visits are creepy.  Pro bono is on the table.  The press can be an ally.  Sometimes you have to cut corners and do the shady deal.  And so on.      

The lawyer Sebastian Rudd has an eye for sexy ladies.  He’s invested in cage fighting.  He likes his single-batch bourbon.  He’s divorced, of course, with a small child.  He calls himself a ‘pathetic’ father and he is.  He tries to teach his boy to defend himself from bullies, and is ragged by his ex-wife for it, a ‘politically-correct’ lesbian attorney.  He even plays rounds of idiotic golf.  He’s actually too busy to be a father, as the boy was ‘an accident.’ The book paints the picture of the macho dad who carries a handgun for protection, and wants to be ‘in his son’s life’ when he’s not. 

The Law

In the current political situation, the ‘thing’ the Democrats are counting on to rein in a stronger Trumpist police state and dictatorship is ‘the law.’  “Blue” state attorney generals are conversing and coordinating over how many lawsuits to file, of what kind, and so on.  After all, lawyers run the Democratic Party in the nuts and bolts sense. The country is awash in lawsuits because that is how you solve problems.  Yet the Trumpists have no real interest in 'the law,' as do most authoritarian Bonapartists, but will take it when they can, as U.S. laws and their application are extremely retrograde anyway.  The two sides are actually playing on different fields.

So the fictional obsession with legal dramas, even cop and detective shows, circles around the legal system endlessly. Its ins, its outs, its weaknesses, its strengths, its deals, blah, blah, blah. No doubt all of this is important in any battle, to have lawyers on your side.  But it diverts from the political necessity that social change for the ‘better’ for the working class is rooted in class struggle – mobilizations, strikes, independent political action, united fronts, sit-downs, occupations; work, community and military committees; confrontations, self-defense and ultimately a revolutionary strategy.  A protest march is only the beginning, but not the end.  The law is a handmaiden, though no union lawyer will tell you that.  Nor will the Democrats because they are most interested in upholding the present capitalist system, which an aggrieved and mobilized working-class threatens. 

This is all familiar stuff, so I won’t go on longer.  What Grisham doesn’t cover in this book – though he has in others – is that money and time work against working-class plaintiffs or defendants.  The system is set up to give some people a poorly-paid public defender, or to plead out, while corporations and individuals with money can string out lawsuits for years and years, or get them done immediately.  Not to mention the laws themselves, which are stacked by reactionary legislatures, along with their firm commitment to private property. Or the stacking of the courts with ultra-conservative ‘originalist’ clones, all the way to the top. The law is politics by other means.  So let's face it and ascend to real politics.

As we read or watch legal dramas, there is always this subtext.  This, like the Coliseum for gladiators, is the arena we should fight in, and it alone.  Don’t buy it.

Prior Grisham novels and non-fiction reviewed on the blog:  “The Confession,” “A Time to Kill,” “Gray Mountain,” “Sycamore Row,” “The Appeal,” “Camino Ghosts.”

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “lawyer,” “Grisham,” “detective,’ “trial.”

The Cultural Marxist / August 12, 2025