Rating: 
Summary: John Grisham's The Street Lawyer - A Great Book!
Review: "'I'm leaving the firm. I have an offer to work for a public interest firm. A legal clinic near Logan Circle. It specializes in homeless law.'" In The Street Lawyer, John Grisham uses a busy city setting, realistic characters, a sticky plot, and lots of figurative language to get his point across: Don't be selfish.
In this book the main character, Michael, was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. firm with eigh hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience. But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging, and learned that he was a mentally ill veteran who'd been in and out of shelters for many years. Then Michael dug a little deeper, and found a dirty secret, and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney. The fast track derailed; the ladder collapsed. Michael bolted from the firm and took a top-secret file with him. He landed on the streets, an advocate for the homeless, a street lawyer.
The setting is in Washington D.C. This is a very effective setting because it is a very large city and probably has a lot of homeless people. The setting is consistent throughout the book. Michael only talks about different sections of Washington D.C.
The characters Grisham used were also essential to the book. They were very life-like. They even think and act like real people. "Mordecai Green was a warm, caring man who labored on the streets protecting hordes of nameless clients."
The plot in The Street Lawyer is awesome. It keeps going and making the reader want to read more and more. The whole book only covers about 6 or 7 days so the plot is drawn out. The conflicts within the plot are Michael vs Himself and Michael vs the outside world.
The language is very vivid in this book. Grisham uses everyday language that we all can relate to. We can hear everything that Michael even thinks about. The language is also very descriptive with attention to every detail. "The sidewalk was busy. I watched the people scurry by, the wind cutting them sharply. A mother with two children passed me, bundled in nice clothing, all holding hands."
John Grisham's The Street Lawyer is a must read. Grisham combines all the necessary elements into this book to make it one of the best books out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Grisham at his worst
Review: I consider a John Grisham fan myself , I love his work , except for this one.This is the story of a lawyer named Michael Brock who works on a corporate law firm . He was a promising young lawyer and he was on the fastlane to become a partner of the firm , until some homeless guy took him and other lawyers of the firm as hostages.
After that , all his life change totally , first he started helping people in churchs , then he changed everything he had to became a lawyer of the homeless people. I didn't like this book for many reasons , there isn't a strong plot that keeps you reading ,in fact the book starts interesting but after 4 or 5 chapters it keeps getting worse and worse and it doesn't stop (expect the worst at the end of the book).
It is easy reading , but that doesn't mean it is fun , you can read 20 pages and nothing happens . Mr. Grisham focused on showing the world of the homeless people, and his political ideas . I think that's what he really wanted but I think he could do that with a better plot. So , I just have to say I don't recomend this book unless you are a John Grisham fan or you are really interested in the homeless people. This is not a courtroom drama that you would like to read on a Grisham book. So if you want a good Grisham novel , skip this , and look for his great books like 'The Chamber' , 'The Rainmaker' , 'The Brethren' or my personal favorite 'A time to kill'.
Rating:
Summary: The Street Lawyer
Review: I had to read this book for school, after that I just kept reading it over and over again! I sat on the edge of my seat every time I read it,I never once got tired of it! John Grisham is an excellent writer!He knows what readers want to read!I'm now reading the The Brethren, and its also very good!
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Summary: The best moralizing a Southern white boy can do
Review: Is Grisham performing some act of penance by writing this book? Did he somehow wrong some poor person in his past life as a real lawyer, and the only way to gain absolution is to make us suffer as well? I wonder. Welcome to Grish--er, Michael Brock's Washington D.C., where the rich are filthy rich, the middle classes are oppressed with the student loans they picked up by going to Ivy League schools, and the homeless and destitute are just victims of society. Diologue is pseudo-gritty and pseudo tough; the streets and jails are pseudo-mean. This is fitting because this is a pseudo-novel, created by a Southern white boy who probably thought that slumming with a real poverty lawyer for a week would entitle him to tell the rest of us All There Is to Know about life on the streets. Like his hero, Grisham is just playing at his job as social avenger. I'm not giving this book a lower score, however, because the plot moves us right along, in between the preaching, and unlike "the Chamber," this book wasn't 100 pages too long. Brevity is appreciated in any sermon.
Rating:
Summary: I like John Grisham's books but this was really bad
Review: Okay, its been a while but all i know was that the begining wasn't so bad. He and some of his co-workers are kept hostage by some homeless guy and they're all scared about what this guy is about to do with that gun. Then when the Homeless person comes to open the door for the food, the police blows his brains out. Now that part was really exciting so I kept on reading hoping like that would show up again. But it didn't. The rest of the story is how he does pro bono work and goes after his old company and in the end wins by having his old law firm due pro bono work. All in all, a pretty dumb book.
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Summary: good lesson, slow story
Review: The Street Lawyer is a novel concentrated on the crude and oblivious outlook the "filthy rich" have on the "lower"(poor) people. But on the other side of the story it tries to show that any person, either the rich or poor, CAN change their outlook on the opposite. John Grisham did a good job at showing this theme in the story. Michael Brock is the main character. He is a top end lawyer, who could have the chance of becoming a partner soon(highest paid type of lawyer). But one day at work his whole life got turned upside down. It started out like a normal day for him. He got on the same elevator as always and pushed his floor number. But someone that he thought didnt belong on that same elavator was. That person was a bumm from the street. He finally reached his floor(after dealing with the stench of the man). And the man then pulled out a weapon and held him and 8 of his fellow colleagues hostage. The man before he get shot by the S.W.A.T team, did get a message through to Michael. He made him realize that he is living life for all the wrong reasons. Michael then realized he should put more of his time into the poor. So he starts going to shelters and helping a public lawyer help people survive in the blistering cold. While spending this time spent at the shelters, Michael realizes this is a good and rewarding (in a moral way)of living life. So he quits his job at the big firm and becomes an public lawyer. I to be honest did not like this book. I picked it up and got hooked onto the hostage chapters. But after that it slowed down way too much. I thought the lessons he was trying to get out in the story were good but I think he just stalled and made the book way longer than it should have been. So if your a Grisham fan you should read this, But im warning you its not his best, and I find it at the bottom.
Rating: 
Summary: A whole new perspective on being a lawyer
Review: Probably most of us have imagined doing work that is totally satisfying beyond any compensation concerns. Oftentimes, it takes a triggering event for a change to be made. For Michael Brock, a lawyer on the fast track to partner status at a large Washington DC law firm, barely surviving being taken hostage along with eight of his associates by a homeless man, who asks some penetrating questions of the hostages, opens his eyes to the existence of an entire group of people without resources and hope. Shortly after the hostage incident in which the homeless man was killed, Michael is the recipient of clandestinely delivered information that describes a file in possession of the firm implicating the firm in the illegal eviction of the hostage taker and others into the harsh conditions of a Washington winter. Michael then undertakes a clumsy late night sortie to steal the file. "Street Lawyer" is ostensibly about the frantic efforts of the firm to retrieve the file, keep a cap on their culpability and preserve their reputation, and Michael's efforts to bring the firm to legal account. The book, in actuality, is about Michael's growing sensitivities to the plight of homeless people and his increasing involvement in the activities of a legal clinic that provides basic legal assistance to the poor. His guide, as he feels his way in a world unknown to him, is Mordecai Green, homeless advocate and founder of the legal clinic. The reader senses Michael's amazement and distress at the devastated lives that he finds in the homeless shelters. In some ways, the book is a little too pat: a big time lawyer with a doctor wife undergoes a wholesale change and terminates a dying marriage; his family is only concerned with his career, not him; the principal partner of the law firm after seeking to wreck Michael's life seems to have a change of heart. The book is best at exploring an alternative view of what being a lawyer is all about and who does and does not usually benefit from the work of lawyers and big law firms.
Rating: 
Summary: A preachy, paper-thin treatise on politics of the homeless
Review: John Grisham's mastery of the legal thriller has given him the latitude to invoke more than the harmony of a well crafted story into his later works, seasoning tales with perhaps a shade of his own political predispositions. Nowhere is this more evident in the tale spun in "The Street Lawyer," a morality play in which an aspiring lawyer confronts his own mortality and personal ethics after a homeless man holds him and his associates hostage at a high-profile law firm. The story holds promise until Grisham too quickly abandons the intrigue of the plot for a political subtext of the plight of the homeless. Rather than crafting a story arc that presents the issues en passant, "Lawyer" insists that you take the moral side of its first-person narrator. The book's most interesting character is homeless advocate Mordecai Green, but who too often is given dialog that sounds as though its been clipped from a census bureau report rather than a real person. Eventually, Grisham all but abandons the notion of a legal thriller with its manufactured tension and too-coincidental sympathies of its main character, and reduces the conflict to a barely credible courtroom negotiation. One even gets the sense that Grisham himself found himself uncomfortable with the plot and its characters; wasting some, using others only in cariacature, eventually becoming all too willing to just get the story out of the way of the real issue Grisham wants to present. That's fine, but don't pedal it as a legal thriller. It clearly isn't.
Rating:
Summary: First Grisham read -- might be my last
Review: After seeing all of Grisham's movies and enjoying their fast-paced, psychological and suspense elements, I decided to give reading one of his books a shot. I chose THE STREET LAWYER because of it NOT being a movie (yet), and I was severly disappointed. Maybe those screenwriters in Hollywood will be able to liven it up, but as far as a reading experience goes, it was...well...boring. There was very little intrigue. The opening scene was about as suspenseful as it got, and that's not saying much in this era of violent news casts every day. And having seen his films, this book felt like a mish-mash of "The Firm" and "The Pelican Brief." I didn't care for the characters, even though Brock was doing a noble thing. I asked myself several times, "Why this sudden transformation of character?" It didn't work for me. The book felt more like a memoir from a real lawyer who gave up big business to become a street lawyer...meaning, not enough moments of fictituous excitement. Maybe in time I'll give Grisham a second chance. If he's been this successful, there must be a reason. But it probably won't be for a while until I can get the bad taste of THE STREET LAWYER out of my mouth.
Rating:
Summary: Read with your heart
Review: This book has evoked a certain emotion in me. As someone who has been active in the pursuit of community service, I feel strongly for those less fortunate ones. The book points to the problem of wealth distribution and disparity of a developed society. As the riches continue their grandeur style of living, there are many poor ones who cannot even afford the bare essentials and necessity such as food and shelter. Michael Brock, a successful lawyer who fast becoming a Partner in a giant D.C. law firm, met with a twist of event that led to his discovery of an illegal eviction by his firm. He walked out of his own comfort zone to work in a legal clinic as a public service lawyer with meagre earning as compared to his previous. The story revolve around Michael and his stolen file which contained evidence of the illegal eviction and how he levered on the situation and instead forced a settlement out from his previous firm for the good of those lingering in the streets.
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