Rating: 
Summary: Though-provoking subject but lacks drama
Review: John Grisham is perhaps the most thought-provoking novelist of our time. He has explored critical issues such as race relations with is first book and followed by a timely tobacco trial in his later novel. In this latest one, he again delivers that though-provoking issue: homelessness. _The Street Lawyer_, no doubt, made me think harder about what law is really about. What a lawyer's mission ought to be. And if there is any lawyer out there who has forgotten the reason why they went to law school, then like one of Grisham's character, this novel is a great reminder to that end. But what this novel brings in theory, it loses in content. I remember when I read the first Grisham novel (A Time to Kill) and I was enthralled. It was fast paced, and every page kept me turning for more. But the content in this book is long and repetitive. Yes, John, we get the message that it is hell to be poor and life on the streets is not that great. And it is true that these folks continuelly need the help of those abled. But do you really need to repeat similar episodes over and over again? I was beginning to think I was watching reruns of a sitcom. And some of the parts of the plot involving the marital problems were rather unnecessary. There was a long lull in the middle of the novel as I waited for the end to come. And when it did, it was rather abrupt, a short 30 pages or less. I would have liked to have seen more elaboration. If only you could have brought us back into the courtroom like in A Time to Kill or the Runaway Jury. I was disappointed in the brevity of hte ending when the mid section fthe book was so long and yet so boring.
Rating: 
Summary: Not JUST another lawyer book.
Review: For readers who read Grisham's ninth title they will be rewarded with the author's best effort. This will please his legions of diehard fans and attract some new ones. The author drags you into the story rather than grabbing you and the more you read the more hooked you become. Grisham turns his attention to the plight of the homeless and sets the stage in Washington, DC. What is interesting about this theme, the homeless and their problems, is that the plot could realistically be played out in any large city. Our hero is on the fast track to the million-dollar-a-year partnership at a prestigious DC law firm. He and his colleagues get held hostage by a homeless person with a grudge against the firm.... I've read several reviews of this book suggesting the plotline is unrealistic, and I disagree. I step over homeless people regularly on a 4-block walk to work at 6 in the morning. I've seen several of the same faces several times over several years and wonder how they survive. A homeless person with a grudge and some ingenuity just might be able to saunter into a private building without adequate security and threaten life and property, and it could conceivably happen in any large city. The possibility of this scenario lends credibility to the storyline. The only outright criticism I can make is that the book what too short. But therein lies a benefit: You can start this book after dinner and be done before Nightline. An ancillary benefit: Grisham's books make great movies. THE STREET LAWYER in celluloid shouldn't disappoint.
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.
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 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: 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: 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!
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.
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