The Associate

This is the new John Grisham novel, which I borrowed from the library (I'm being cheap these days). I've only just started it, so I admit that I don't know the whole story, but the set up already annoys me.

Its about a 3L law student, just about to graduate, who wants to work for legal aid and help immigrant workers. Due to some bad judgment in college, where he hung out with drunken frat boys, a party at his apartment becomes the scene of an incident where two of the protagonists' frat brothers have sex with a drunk, wasted (and quite loose with her morals) female student, who may or may not have been unconscious (and therefore may or may not have consented). The protagonist has passed out and has no idea what has happened until later. The female student cries rape many days later, but no charges are issued because she has a bad reputation and can't remember any details, such as who exactly raped her, if it was rape. Everyone puts the incident out of their head.

Unfortunately when the protagonist is mulling over accepting the legal aid job after law school versus a super high paid wall street legal job (where the big firm works you 18+ hours a day for $200,000 a year), he gets blackmailed because apparently someone video tapped the college drunken party/possible rape scene. Again, our protagonist isn't shown doing anything, but for some reason, he's convinced he'll still go down for the incident because he was in the room (albeit passed out). So to avoid ruining his legal career, he is blackmailed into working for the big firm in order to perform corporate espionage on some huge government defense contractor lawsuit. Its unclear whether its to benefit the competing company on the other side of the lawsuit, or a foreign country/company trying to take advantage of the situation.

I just find it highly improbably that any smart law student, as the protagonist is supposed to be, with a "scrappy but smart lawyer dad" is led to believe that he'd go down for a rape he clearly didn't commit, or even be considered an accessory, such that it would "ruin his career." He's supposedly so scared that he won't even tell his "scrappy but smart lawyer dad" about the problem in order to, oh, I don't know, maybe get some real legal advise. The book talks about how the law student "remembers the Duke student rape incident" and how those kids are "still trying to live it down." I know I barely remember the incident, let alone know the names of anyone involved such that I would hold it against them (since they were found not guilty or charges dropped or whatever).

I just find it hard to believe the law student would fall for this crap. He did nothing really wrong. Sure its not a good thing to be associated with a sordid incident, but I doubt anyone, certainly the vast majority of employers this guy could work for (particularly since he wanted to go into legal aid - not exactly a top secret or security clearance type job) would hold it against him.

Maybe the rest of the book will improve. I know that sometimes authors have to stretch to set up the story, but this is quite a big one. I would have thought John Grisham was better, he's had many good good legal thrillers, and some great non-fiction books too. So far I'm not impressed with The Associate.