Clay Carter is a bright young ambitious lawyer who has plenty of legal talent and a degree from a decent law school to back
up his credentials. Unfortunately his idealism and sense of altruism has caused his career advancement to grind to an indefinite halt. By taking a position at the Office of the Public Defender, he signs away any realistic chance he had of scoring it big on the
legal circuit.
He drives a battered car, earns a paltry income by his own standards and reads his ever increasing case load in a windowless office. Fed up with the penny pinching and lacklustre life he leads, Carter suddenly quits his job and sets up his own legal firm with the money he makes in a class action law suit he files on behalf of numerous complainants. Intoxicated on the power of money, he starts to spend and enjoy the lavish lifestyle which he has up to now publicly loathed but secretly desired.
His new found friends comprise of tycoon tort lawyers soon lead him into territory he neither needs nor desires and when his other more adventurous class action suits start to back fire, he
finds himself alone and under federal scrutiny.
The King of Torts is about a man who starts out as a minion in his trade and through a series of timely and fortunate successes, finds himself widely regarded as the top dog in the company of wolves.
Grisham highlights the massive amounts of money at stake and the huge sums legal firms can extract from tort law suits, as well as the ever gullible people who can be suckered into signing up for these cash windfalls.
Clay Carter represents the type of man who, thanks to human nature, gets caught up in the materialism and greed culture of modern living. He is ultimately a good person and despite being derailed in love and money, Grisham steers him in a morally satisfying direction that every reader will be pleased with.