Now available as an audiobook.
A TALE OF TWO LAWYERS
A Tale of Two Lawyers is mainstream general fiction, intended for the entertainment and edification of adult audiences somewhat interested in how the law business operates. The author is well experienced on the subject, after forty-seven years as a Chicago practicing criminal and civil litigator. He therefore spins a realistic tale of two lawyers, once roommates in law school, and provides in the telling a critical explanation of the appropriately sullied law business.
It is the chronicle of a severed friendship, of two careers, of love and intrigue, of deserved success, and deserving failure. It is the story of Mel and Jerry, roommates at Northwestern Law School in the early 1950s, and follows their contrasting careers, private lives, and loves as they pursue the legal profession down divergent pathways. It provides an in-depth, authentic exposé of the business of law, including an exploration of the most flagrantly practiced attorney/client conflict of interest – hourly billing.
The book begins at the story’s end: an unidentified couple enjoys recent retirement at the pool of their new beachfront home in Costa Rica. At the end of the book - after moving through the career advancements, varied clients, and life experiences of the two men - we learn which character thus ends up happily ever after. The story actually begins in the second chapter, where we meet roommates Mel and Jerry in their law school dorm. Mel’s legal adventure hatches in his father’s small Chicago nickel and dime law firm, where he soon leaves and makes career moves that turn him into a top civil and criminal trial lawyer. He finishes his career in a lucrative class action with Jerry as his adversary.
Jerry is a womanizing, hard-drinking, narcissistic, Notre Dame alumnus, wannabe ex-football hero. He begins his career working for two older alumnae - partners in a small Chicago personal injury defense firm, dependent for business on insurance company referrals. Jerry becomes accomplished in acquiring insurance company clients and thrives as he learns to game the hourly billing system. He builds the firm into a lucrative silk-stocking business with clients in the highest echelons of Chicago society. Jerry and his firm are employed to help devise and implement a mortgage-based security of dubious value (a precursor to that which brought down the US and world economies in 2007), which inevitably suffers disastrous market losses. Consequently an investor, a woman from Mel’s distant past, retains Mel to bring a class action for securities fraud against Jerry’s client, to be defended by the expensive, large-firm team led by Jerry. The book’s ending finally reveals the undisclosed identity question raised at its beginning, as the winner marries and retires to Costa Rica, while defeat appropriately destroys the loser.
NOw for sale as an ebook and in print on Amazon.com.
