John Grisham on Storytelling and Justice

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Equal access to justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice and An LSC Podcast will explore ways to expand access to justice and illustrate why it is important to the legal community, business government, and the general public. Talk Justice is sponsored by the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation.

Ron Flagg:

Hello, I’m Ron Flagg, president of LSC here to introduce today’s episode. Earlier this month, LSC held our 50th anniversary celebration in Washington DC where we brought together the executive directors and board chairs of the 130 legal aid providers that LSC funds first series of events, some educational others, inspiring or entertaining. The segment that we’re about to share with you, I think is all three in this conversation. John Grisham, the bestselling author, lawyer, and advocate for Access to Justice is brilliantly interviewed by LSC Board member Robert Grey, the president of the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity. Ellis E is honored to have John Grisham on our Leaders Council, and we hope that you enjoy learning more about his life law, career, philanthropic philosophies, and his sense of humor. On this episode of Talk Justice, I’ll pass it off now to Robert Grey. To properly introduce our guest,

Robert Grey:

My name is Robert Grey and I serve on the board of the Legal Services Corporation. Those who tell the story, write the history. We are fortunate to have a very able storyteller with us today, but it didn’t start there. Each time we meet, it’s an oral history’s of who we are recorded for those who will come after us so that they will continue to carry the baton that has been passed to them to keep America safe, to keep America democratic, and to keep America fair for all of its citizens, for all of its people, both nationally and internationally. The story that Doug Equally and Secretary Clinton told yesterday was important to hear again this morning. I met with Bucky ask you and a couple of other colleagues, Bucky, thank you for reminding me of our history. When I first joined the A BA, I met a guy named Tom Smale, the longest serving member of the LSC Board in its history. Tom, thank you for sharing that history. Let’s get after it. Let’s get after it. I want you to join me in welcome, a lawyer, an author, and a philanthropist, John Grisham. John and I are going to have a conversation with you for you, through you, and hopefully we will record more of our history. John, would you join me on stage?

There’s a place in America called Jonesborough, Arkansas. Young man born there, whole future ahead of him, made some choices in life and one of those choices was to be part of the solution for how we maintain a standard of excellence, a standard of justice, and a standard for human behavior. How old were you? Seven years old when you concluded? I’m sorry. I’m going to have a conversation with John and we’ve decided that it is best to be somewhat spontaneous. I said, well, we’ve got a script here. He said, I read the script. Let’s have a conversation. Give me a little bit of Jonesborough, Arkansas family then and family now.

John Grisham:

Sure. My father was a sharecropper cotton farmer in actually black Oak, Arkansas, but the nearest hospital was Jonesboro, and so we were all born there. Those are pretty rough days. I do recall picking cotton and chopping cotton, and those are not fond memories. By the time I was seven, my father had lost everything and his land was not that productive and we left the farm actually in middle of the night to avoid I think debt collectors. And we took off and my dad got a job as a bulldozer operator with a construction company. They moved us around all over the Mid-South for several years, mainly in Mississippi. And then when I was 12 or 13, we settled very near Memphis. All the towns were around Memphis, and that’s why Memphis has always been kind of the home area. By the time I was 15 though, things had improved dramatically.

My father worked a double shift and was very frugal. My mom worked and we were living in the suburbs and life picked up. We had better schools, but leaving the farm was one of the most important moments in my life because I didn’t realize it, but my cousins did not leave the farm and they should have, it’s just not a good way to live. But we had better schools, better opportunity. My parents dreamed of all of us going to college, have five kids, and so I was able to go to college. My parents couldn’t go. And at some point about halfway through college, after two years of having a whole lot of fun, I realized that my grades were not too impressive and I couldn’t party for the rest of my life. And we were very strict Southern Baptist home where everything was illegal. I mean, you can’t do anything.

So we couldn’t wait to get away from home and have some fun out in the world. And so I had a lot of fun my first two years and I was inspired to go to law school. And the reason for that was with my background, I wanted to do something if I could, to maybe give me a chance to make a little money for the first time or get a more prestigious position or whatever. So I went to law school and finished at Ole Miss and went back to my hometown outside of Memphis and hung out in my shingle and declared my own law firm. I couldn’t get a job and there weren’t really real jobs in the county. I don’t want to go anywhere else. And so I hung out in my shingle and just said, Hey, I’m ready to start suing people. And I was a new gun slinger in town with no ammunition. I’m ready, I’m ready to go. And one of my first clients had a profound impact on me as a lawyer, as a person, as a human being. And they were very low income people who found their way to my office.

Robert Grey:

It is about the choices we make and the circumstances that sort of present it to us that inform our vision of where we’re going to go in life. So this is a very interesting story, but that client provided you with an opportunity to become

John Grisham:

A leader in the community. Yeah, they lived in a trailer park. They were about to be evicted from the trailer and they had just got the piece of paper to be in court tomorrow. And we had legal aid back then, but the nearest office was an hour and a half away. And what the older lawyers would do in the town would send all of the bad clients to the new guys in town. And so these people found their way to my office. I was the rookie and they were husband and wife, small kid, and they were really in despair, but they were working poor and they were about to be evicted, and they lived in a trailer park that I, well, we all knew about the trailer park. It was not a nice place, but it’s probably about 10 miles away in our county and that’s where the only place they could live.

The rent was exorbitant and took landlord tenant law in law school, learned nothing. And then, so I reviewed their case and I said, I almost said, why don’t y’all go next door? But I figured the guy next door sent ’em over to me and I realized, well, this is one of my first week or so in the law office, the law law business. I just couldn’t say no to people who needed help. I could not say no, I could not tell these people, look, you can’t afford to pay me a dime. I can’t take your case. Where would they go? There was no other place for ’em to go. And so I took their case and by the time we got to court the next morning, they had some neighbors with them who were also being evicted. I picked up four more clients. We walked into court and I wasn’t sure what to do, but the judge was a good person.

I knew him pretty well. The landlord was there and he was not a good person. He was famous, infamous, and when I walked up to the bench, they called the case. I walked up with my clients, the first two clients, first couple, and when they realized that these poor people had a lawyer, everything changed. Everything changed. You’ve seen it happen. You live it, okay, low income people get run over all the time unless they show up with a lawyer. And I realized the power of a law degree, the power of a law license at that moment. And the judge said, Mr. Christian, you represent these people. And I said, yes, sir. On what basis? I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. So I just said, judge is pro bono. And the client wished to me said, what’s pro bono? What’s pro bono? And I said, well, I think it means that you don’t have to pay and I don’t get paid.

And he liked that it was okay with him. It’s a good deal. And so we roughed up the landlord pretty good. I boned up on the, I stayed up half the night reading landlord the code sections and there were a lot of errors, a lot of code sections. He had cut corners. And so I had these four or five clients who were all being evicted. We got all the cases kicked out, and I had had time that morning to prepare a three page lawsuit suing the landlord for this and that and violations, and also just for fun, a bunch of punitive damages, which scared the shit out of the guy. Okay. Suddenly he was sued for a hundred thousand dollars and we walked out and I basically at that point owned the trailer park. They were all mine.

Robert Grey:

You also got a nickname.

John Grisham:

Yeah, they couldn’t grasp the pro bono concept, and so they started calling me lawyer bono. Here comes lawyer bono,

Robert Grey:

Which provided you with a pipeline of clients.

John Grisham:

Oh, I had more clients than I could deal with. I had to hire, I had one secretary I could barely pay. We had to hire another one just to keep up with the people. There were about a hundred families in the trailer park, and suddenly they all had problems and they were legitimate problems. And so I tried my best to help ’em and there was some criminal charges as you might guess, and it was really, I mean, I was going to lose some serious money with these people and I was trying to make a living. And then a few months later, like I said, about a year later, a family was from the trailer park. My people was involved in a terrible car wreck involving a 18 wheeler that was heavily insured and a driver who was drinking. And so my ship came home real soon. We got a nice settlement and suddenly I could breathe.

Robert Grey:

Practicing law, as my mentor told me is a full contact sport, and you either on the field trying to score and win or you are a spectator. He looked at me, he said, Bobby, which one are you? You were on the field, you were trying to score and win. You were practicing law.

John Grisham:

Yeah, at the same time to generate fees, I was taking all the court appointed criminal cases I could possibly handle. There were a lot of them. Again, it was a tradition in the county that the older lawyers had taken those cases. There was no public defender service or the engine cases were passed out piecemeal by the judges to really whoever wanted them. So I raised my hand and took a lot of criminal cases and I had two murder cases, two murder trials, not capital but murder trials. My first year out of law school, I tried by myself to jury verdict and got not guilty verdicts and I really enjoyed, I had this dream of being a big time plaintiff’s lawyer. I wanted the Courtroom stuff. I wanted the experience and I really wanted to help people who were getting, I sued insurance companies. My clients were the working poor on this side of the street, across the street were the insurance companies and the banks, the employers and the government, whatever, people with money.

And I really got into the trial lawyer syndrome of taking the little guy to court and defeating Goliath. I had no idea that was going to spill over into my fiction because back then I wasn’t thinking about fiction. I didn’t dream of being a writer. It’s not something I studied. It just happened later in life. I was 30 years old in a Courtroom, my Courtroom, Desota County courthouse in Hernando, Mississippi, and I saw a trial, saw something that was extremely dramatic, and it inspired me to try to write that story. And if I hadn’t been there that day and seen that and become obsessed with this idea that it became a time to kill, I would’ve never written it.

Robert Grey:

So here is the beginning of he who tells the story, writes the history, and you started with a time to kill. How did that go over?

John Grisham:

It was a total flop. The book lucky enough to get the book published. It was exciting to get a phone call from an agent in New York that was the first magical phone call and the guy called and said, I want to represent you. I thought, this is great. I can’t believe it. A year later he called and said, I found a publisher. I’ve sold the book. And I said, who’s the publisher? I had never heard of the publisher. It was an unknown small press in New York, but it didn’t matter. I had a contract, $15,000 advance for a time to kill, which I thought was pretty good money in 19 87, 88, and I’d been writing every day for three years to write a time to kill. And so when that was over, I told my wife, who is my first reader and my best friend, and she’s an English major, and so she’s a pretty tough critic. I said, I’m going to write one more book after a time to kill, and if the second book flops, you can forget this little career. I’ll just keep suing people or maybe you become a judge or go back to my trial lawyer something.

And so in two years I wrote the second book, which was called The Firm, and when the firm came out March of 91, it was immediate bestseller and my whole life was changing rapidly. Once I got the dream, about halfway through my 10 year legal career, which is not much time, I got the dream of writing full time, no pressure, no clients, no trials, no judges just sitting back somewhere and writing full time. I couldn’t imagine that dream, but it was so wonderful to think about and suddenly there it was, and I got up from my office and I walked out the door. I didn’t turn off the lights. I slammed the door and I said, I’m no longer a lawyer. I’m going to write full time.

Robert Grey:

It turned out pretty good. You have sold over 300 million copies of your stories. You are translated in over 47 countries. You have 10 consecutive bestsellers, I’m sorry, 37 consecutive bestsellers in 10 movies.

John Grisham:

I’m going to correct you just a moment. Ashley is closer to 400 million, but who’s counting, right? I see those numbers. I know how many languages there are because we sell the foreign rice language by language, so I keep up with those, but somebody at AA sits around in about every five years they’ll raise the number. It was 2 50, 300, 3 50. There’s no way the world they know. No one keeps up with how many books I sell in South Korea or Greece. We don’t know. It’s all fiction. It’s all pr. Well,

Robert Grey:

It is important, however, notwithstanding those points that you raised, that we understand the American struggle, the American and human plight, and to record that in ways that are understandable to people, you are now a master storyteller. You have a unique perspective because of your background and the way you see it. How does your telling stories and our ability to tell stories shape public policy, public opinion? How do we translate this into ways in which we can improve the way justice is dispensed in this

John Grisham:

Country? A long time ago, I think that books could have a much bigger impact than today because you had, well start with Uncle Tom’s cabin, and that book almost started the Civil War. I mean, it had a huge impact on the country because it describes slavery in terms that a lot of people had never seen before. Abe Lincoln told her, here beat your Stow. When he met her, he said, here’s a little lady who started the Civil War. Fast forward a hundred years to Kill a Mockingbird in the early sixties. Good book, great book, great movie. Back to Back had a huge impact because it was so famous that people around the world read it and saw it and for the first time, saw Jim Crow in the 1930s, and so my long time editor in the UK from Scotland, and he said when he read that book and saw that movie his whole class, they couldn’t believe it was true that people really treated that way in America.

That book had a huge impact. Some books are like that. I think historically nowadays though, when you have, because all you had back then were newspapers before television, books, magazines now, there’s so much information. We see everything up close, live every night on the news, 24 hour news, the internet, there’s so much information now, I’m not sure books have that impact. What I try to do though, when I write a book with an issue and the issue can be wrongful convictions or death penalty or legal aid or environmental destruction or whatever, denial of access to justice, civil justice, whatever my idea is for that story, I try to craft it around a legal thriller, a suspenseful story that people can rip through in two or three days, and then when the book is over, they think about that issue, but maybe they’ve never thought about it before. So what I want to do is raise awareness with the issues that I care about, and I think that’s my, it’s not my role. I don’t have to do it. I could write every, the book I published last fall was the Exchange. It’s a sequel to the firm. There’s no issue in the book. It’s pure entertainment. All the books are designed to be entertaining. Okay? I don’t kid myself and tell people I’m trying to write serious literary art. That stuff doesn’t sell. I want to sell. Okay,

Robert Grey:

Well, here’s the good news. The good news is what you get from what you sell, you share, and part of who we are as a people is not what we receive, but what we give you are not only interested in writing books, you’re interested in the human condition, and you think about that and not only think about it, but you act on it. There are other things other than writing books that drive you and your family talk about some of those things that are part of building a better Society.

John Grisham:

Thank you. My wife is on the board of Share Our Strength, which is the parent group of No Kid Hungry, and we’re doing a lot of work with childhood hunger because childhood hunger is one issue that can be solved in this country. We also do a lot of work.

There’s enough food in America to feed everybody, and there are enough food programs, money that’s already designated spent and food purchased to feed everybody. The problem is getting it to the kids, the hungry kids and their families, and there are a lot of ’em. And so we do a lot of work with No Kid Hungry. My wife and I look at all the opportunities we have, and we focus on hunger, homelessness, and injustice. Those are the main three, and you have to find a focus because there’s so many different ways to give when we do a lot, but we realize homelessness cannot be solved. We can do better. We can do a lot better injustice. Civil and criminal is never going to really be solved, but we can do a whole lot better. I would do a lot of work with wrongful convictions. I’m on the board of the Innocence Project and also Centurion Ministries, and I spent a lot of time working on wrongful conviction cases, and if we would change about five or six laws in this country, state by state, we could go a long way to eliminating more wrongful convictions, and we’re making progress slowly, slowly, slowly, making progress in those areas.

It can be done, but you’re never going to completely eliminate wrongful convictions. But that’s the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

Robert Grey:

Well, it also translate on the civil side as well. I mean, part of what we’re trying to do is educate. I mean, you are a former legislator, former member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. We have to educate those who are there in a place that can make a difference every day. Talk to us about that. Talk to us about telling the story to those who can make a difference for us, whether they’re in the legislature, whether they’re in business, whether they’re just there, trying to understand how to be a positive factor in the civil justice system.

John Grisham:

When I ran for the state legislature, I was 28 years old, which should be against the law in every state. My opponent had been there for a long time, and I knew I was confident I could beat him. It was a very close race, and I won the race by all those boats in my trailer park. We realized

Robert Grey:

That’s a new meaning to a class action.

John Grisham:

We realized a lot of folks in the trailer park were not registered, and we fixed that overnight. We got ’em registered, and then every trailer had a big Grisham sign in the front yard popped up against it. They all had bumper stickers, banners, billboards. That was my territory, and I got all those votes and won. I ran for the legislature because when I was in law school and when I was in college in Mississippi State law school at Ole Miss, at that time, late seventies, Mississippi was still the only state with no public kindergarten system, and we knew that as college students, and we were very bothered by that. When I was in law school as a long tradition at the Ole Miss Law School, probably most states, those graduates lawyers serving in the state legislature, that was the launching ground for politics back then.

And I had four buddies and we all decided to run in 19 83, 2 years out of law school to run for the state legislature to try and bring about educational reform and establish a state kindergarten system. That was my motive for running the job. Paid $8,000 a year, took up half your time, so you really couldn’t say you did it for money. When three of the four got elected, one became governor, but we went to Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital with those very idealistic notions in mind, and I’d like to say we did some good. I frankly couldn’t stand public service. What I realized, once you get elected, everybody, I dunno how close the race was, everybody voted for you. Everybody, and most of them want something. They want small things. So a driver’s license, passport ticket, fixed or job, everybody wants a job, job, jobs, and I had no staff, we had no staff back then. We had no secretary. We had to do it all ourselves. And I really, the first term, two or three years into my first term, I realized that I really was bad at constituent service. I got to where I couldn’t stand the voters. And when

You’re a politician, you can’t stand the voters. It’s time to quit.

Robert Grey:

Well, John, the next time we do this, I really want you to tell us how you really feel about subject matter. Let me close with this. You have two children, daughter’s, a school teacher, North Carolina son has his own law practice, Charlottesville, Virginia, by the way, that’s a great state that you live in. I want you to close your comments with this. You’ve just told us you don’t know the background of that legislator that you have to talk to. You don’t know the background of that judge that you’re going to appear before. You don’t know the background of individuals who can make a difference. So there’s a certain amount of discipline that we have to have in the way we approach solving these problems of great magnitude. But at the end of the day, we all put on our clothes the same way, one leg at a time. Talk to us about the discipline that you have had to have to do the work that you’ve had to do, and about the discipline we have to have to do the work that we have

John Grisham:

To do. I’m not sure I can talk about your discipline. I’ll try to talk about mine, and it looks a whole lot more rigorous than you might think. I write for three or four hours every morning. If I’m at home, it’s every morning and I’m home most of the time, and that’s about a thousand words a day, and that’s a lot of words in the course of a year, and I have so many ideas for future novels. I’m still, I think like a lawyer. The law is where my interests are, and I am always looking at the law, lawyers, judges, courts, trials, appeals, trends and litigation, law firms blowing up those sensations. Even crime, those stories are, that’s what I like to read, and I tell people, when you study lawyers, the material is endless because of all the things they do. Usually, most lawyers are honest, hardworking people who don’t make a lot of money. Nobody wants to read about those guys. You want to read about the crook who stole the money and faked his death and whatever. Those are the fun stories, but I have a lot of ideas I could have stopped years ago, but also what I’ve learned over the years is, and this doesn’t motivate greed, doesn’t motivate me. I’ve realized that the more I write and the longer I go on and whatever, it gives me more opportunities

To help people. And that’s what we as a family really enjoy doing, is helping those who are less fortunate and especially for the causes we believe in, and that’s motivational.

Robert Grey:

Ladies and gentlemen, we should have more storytelling this, that understand the need for access to justice, to understand the need for fairness, and to understand how to protect the promise for all the things that you’ve done, for all the things that you do and all the things that you see. An opportunity for us to raise that bar, to raise that standard. We want to thank you for always being there for us, for participating in our organizations activities and to bring the word to us that we should keep the faith that we should continue to believe. And if you can believe, if you can conceive, then you can achieve 50 more years. Thank you, John. Thank you, All

Speaker 1:

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