John Grisham's 'The Rooster Bar' Decries For-Profit Law Schools

Whether or not you choose to read this book, please don’t borrow money to enroll in a for-profit law school.

Law school is too expensive (not a particularly provocative statement, I know). Prospective law students are mostly in their early 20s, many without sufficient life experience or financial literacy to truly understand what they are signing up for. Three years is a long time, and many students gladly borrow six figures from the government at high interest rates without adequate thought as to precisely how the money will be paid back. I will freely admit that I was one of these people; because I was able to borrow enormous sums at literally the click of a button, the debt did not feel real. Only after graduation and that first bill did the plight truly sink in. I was fortunate enough to attend a good law school and obtain a well-paying job, but many others are not so lucky. Worse still are those who attend for-profit law schools, which seem to exist solely to profit off of unqualified students who have little to no job prospects. John Grisham tackles this latter topic in his new novel The Rooster Bar (affiliate link). While I am glad that an author of Grisham’s stature is shedding light on such an important issue, the novel itself is a mixed bag.

Inspired by the 2014 Atlantic article, “The Law-School Scam” by Paul Campos, the novel revolves around three 3L students — Mark Frazier, Todd Lucero, and Zola Maal — at the fictional Foggy Bottom Law School in Washington, D.C. Foggy Bottom is a low-ranked school, and job prospects are dim, even though the three have each incurred six figures of student debt. During winter break, their friend Gordy Tanner — who is also Zola’s boyfriend — commits suicide after attempting to piece together a conspiracy connecting Foggy Bottom to Hinds Rackley, a financial titan who is embroiled in a Wells Fargo-esque consumer fraud scandal and owns four for-profit law schools via a web of companies. Shaken by Gordy’s death, Mark, Todd, and Zola drop out of law school, assume fake names, and attempt to practice law without a license, based out of a local bar (hence the book’s title). They rely on the hectic D.C. court system, in which low-level criminal cases are heard one after the other and no one ever checks whether or not the three have been admitted to the D.C. Bar. By assuming pseudonyms, the three are able to duck their lenders, to which they owe enormous sums. Unsurprisingly, the ruse is not foolproof, and they find themselves in increasing trouble with the law and their lenders.

This is the second time in three years that Grisham has tackled the difficulty of being a young attorney in the United States (the other instance being 2014’s weak Gray Mountain, which portrayed an attorney who has been laid off from her mega firm). I applaud Grisham for writing about this important issue. As explained in The Rooster Bar, virtually everyone at Foggy Bottom should probably not be a lawyer due to their low LSAT scores. But the school has conned them into forking over massive sums of money, with little to no chance of ever being able to pay back those loans. These law schools exist as pure profit centers, not as meaningful education institutions. And because anyone can borrow federal money to go to law school, many students agree to enroll without fully understanding the risk they are taking. In one scene, Gordy painstakingly details the economics of the for-profit law schools that Rackley owns, and how Rackley likely clears roughly $20 million per year per school.

Grisham also hits on the important issue that even though they are not officially lawyers, Mark, Todd, and Zola are only one semester away from graduating law school. Without jobs lined up, they and their classmates could very well start solo practices. But Foggy Bottom has woefully prepared them for the actual practice of law. Students at a school like Foggy Bottom do not have the luxury of learning how to practice on multi-person teams at a law firm.

Despite some weighty issues (such as Gordy’s suicide and the plight of Zola’s family, who are deported to Senegal), once the plot gets going, the novel is wackier than the typical Grisham. The trio’s attempt to acquire clients and actually “litigate” their low-level cases is amusing, as they do a very poor job mimicking the real lawyers they see in court.

The plot certainly is not perfect. There are some minor plot points — such as Gordy’s friends blaming Mark and Todd for Gordy’s death — that are not really fleshed out. In addition, once the trio begins to get caught and face their own criminal liability for their fraud, everything falls way too neatly into place as the three attempt to untangle the mess they have made.

The Rooster Bar is an unusual Grisham novel in that it has three main protagonists instead of one. It might have made more sense to eliminate one of the three, as Mark and Todd are virtually indistinguishable. They stay together during most portions of the storyline, and virtually every “Mark plot” could be given to Todd and vice versa. As if Grisham realizes the similarity of these two main characters, Mark and Todd even both sleep with the same woman.

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Zola is a much more well-written character, as she fights the bureaucratic labyrinth that has ensnared her family (her family is undocumented and arrived from Senegal years ago; Zola was born in the United States and has United States citizenship). Grisham does not mask his point of view on this issue. He decries the fact that Zola’s family is forced from their homes in the United States after leading productive lives for decades. He also describes the lack of due process that Zola’s family faces.

The Rooster Bar is a fairly quick and easy read, though I wonder if someone interested in the topic would be better off merely reading Campos’s article. Whatever you read, just please don’t borrow money to enroll in a for-profit law school.


Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

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