Legal English

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore is an expert on killers. She’s spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives - predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. The case against Thompson as the Bloody Heart Killer is damning - and closed, as far as Gwen and the media are concerned. If not for one new development.

The Dollmaker was the name of the serial killer who had stalked Los Angeles ruthlessly, leaving grisly calling cards on the faces of his victims. Now, with a single faultless shot, Harry Bosch thinks he has ended the city's nightmare.

Robert Sulzberger appeared to have a perfect life—a respected position in the City Council, a lovely family, a house with all the trimmings—but behind the façade, his life was crumbling. Drawn into a world of crime and corruption, Sulzberger couldn't find a way out. He couldn't escape. And when he tried to walk away, he found himself behind bars. The trial captures the media's attention, and the dark forces of politics are thrown into the limelight. As the son of a convicted serial killer, Tex Hunter knows just how dangerous those forces can be.

Barbara Holloway is a trial lawyer who tends to take on difficult cases, but this time it seems there's no defense at all. It appears that Vinny Jessup died when his car rolled over on a bad curve on Lookout Mountain. Then the sheriff finds the gunshot wound. With a large insurance policy as her motive, could his much younger wife have staged the death?

Driven by his tragic past, prosecutor Chance Meridian seeks justice for a beautiful woman brutally murdered in her own home. Except nothing comes easy in Atlanta, and certainly not justice. A lot of people in town wanted Sara Barton dead, and every single one of them is lying about something. Chance shouldn't be surprised. Murder is an ugly business. But so is love.

Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.

In the corridors of Chicago's top law firm, 26-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case. Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances - except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson. One secret could save Sam Cayhall's life...or cost Adam his.

A brilliant reporter, haunted by her husband's death.... A disgraced cop, tangled in a web of lies.... Two unlikely heroes, brought together by one unthinkable crime.... Listen to the first three episodes of this addictive series, brought together for the first time in one volume.

Pete Banning was Clanton's favorite son, a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, a father, a neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning in 1946, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell.

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer's career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track - until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the "lucky" associates. She's offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she'd get her old job back. In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about.

Clanton, Mississippi. The life of a 10-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. Until her father acquires an assault rifle - and takes justice into his own outraged hands. For 10 days, with burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spreading through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life...and then his own....

A movie director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then staging her death to make it look like a suicide. In a seemingly unrelated case, a loner is murdered, leaving the sheriff's department with no clues. One unsettling revelation after another leaves a retired FBI agent and an L.A. detective thinking they've unmasked a most frightening killer with almost inconceivable calculation.

We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice. But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens. Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct.

Raised in Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now Tom has been accused of murdering the Black nurse with whom he worked in the 1960s and Penn is determined to exonerate him. The quest for answers leads down a trail of corruption and brutality that places Penn’s family squarely in the crosshairs of the Double Eagles, a vicious offshoot of the KKK controlled by some of the state’s most powerful men. Penn ultimately must acknowledge that secrets from his father’s past have put the Cage family in great jeopardy.

When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age 18, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington DC. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow. His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol - and perhaps even to Washington.

Hailey Dean, the prosecutor who's never lost a case, heads to Savannah as an expert witness on the sensational Julie Love-Adams murder trial, but she soon finds herself embroiled in a mystery and an unexpected love affair. At the baggage claim, Hailey is greeted by the handsome Lieutenant Chase Billings. On their way to her hotel, they hear an all-points bulletin for a murder that has just been committed.

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

Sebastian Rudd, rogue lawyer, defends people other lawyers won't go near. It's controversial and dangerous work, which is why Sebastian needs his bodyguard/assistant/sidekick: Partner. So if Sebastian is just about the most unpopular lawyer in town, why is Partner so loyal to him? How did they meet? And what's the real story of this man of few words who's as good with a gun as he is with the law? The surprising answers are all in PARTNERS, John Grisham's first exclusively digital short story.