The Street Lawyer

The Betrayal is a novel by the American author John Grisham. The original edition was published in 1998 under the title The Street Lawyer, the German edition for the first time in 1999 by Hoffmann & Campe.

Content

The young attorney Michael Brock has a well paid job with advancement opportunity, a nice apartment, a nice car and a woman. He dreams of big money - until the day when he and eight of his colleagues in the firm for which he works, from a homeless man who only " Mister " is called, being taken hostage. Mister accuses the lawyers to think only of themselves, to be greedy and to donate money to the poor. The hostage-taking ends with Mister is shot by a sniper the police.

From now on, Brock thinks about his attitude to success and money. By the taking of hostages, he comes into contact with Mordecai Green, who heads a law firm for the destitute. Winter in Washington is cold and the shelters are overcrowded. Green calls Brock and asks him to help him in an emergency shelter. For the first time in his life, Brock has to deal with such a degree of misery. As a helper in the shelter he learns Lontae Burton know who has to sleep in an abandoned car with her four children. As Brock needs to read a few days later in the newspaper that the family is smothered in her car, he quickly finds out that she had to sleep only in the car, because they of the firm, where he works illegally on the street have been set. Brock tries to learn more about the case and steals with the help of a solicitor's clerk a file.

Since Brock now know which intrigues his firm is involved and the law firm for the poor needs help, he decides to forego success and money and help from now on as a street lawyer the poor, whereby his marriage on the rocks is. When the loss of the file is noted in the law firm, Brock quickly gets in the crosshairs of the police and his former law firm, everything is now working to recover the file.

Brock and Green then decide on behalf of Lontae Burton file a complaint and to use the media attention to draw attention to the problems of the homeless. But Brock's old firm does not give up. Finally there is an out of court settlement over 5 million dollars and Brock is revoked due to the theft of the Act for nine months the license to practice law, but this does not affect his work for the firm of the poor. The final chapter tells how the chairman of the firm comes to Brock to the office and, plagued by bad conscience, offering the aid of the law firm. He makes the suggestion that each attorney in the firm regularly has to work for free for the poor.