The Firm (novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Mitchell Y. "Mitch" McDeere graduated in accounting from Western Kentucky University, passed his Certified Public Accountant exams on the first attempt, and graduated third in his class from Harvard Law School. Mitch is married to his high school sweetheart, Abby Sutherland. They also attended college together. His brother Ray is serving a prison term, and his other brother, Rusty, died in Vietnam.

Mitch has offers from law firms in New York and Chicago but eventually decides to join Bendini, Lambert and Locke, a small tax law firm based in Memphis. The firm seduces him by offering him a large salary, a lease on a new BMW automobile and a low interest mortgage on a house. Soon after he joins, his new colleagues help him study and pass his bar exam--the first priority for new associates. Mitch is assigned to partner Avery Tolar, the firm "bad boy," but a highly accomplished attorney.

Two of Mitch's colleagues, Marty Kozinski and Joe Hodge, die in a scuba diving accident in the Cayman Islands a few days before he starts at the firm. On his first scheduled day of work, Mitch attends their funerals. Mitch finds the deaths unsettling, but focuses on his goal of becoming a successful employee of the firm. During a memorial service at the firm for the two deceased attorneys, Mitch notices plaques commemorating three other attorneys who died while working at the firm. Suspicious, he hires a private investigator, Eddie Lomax, an ex-cell mate of his brother Ray, to investigate the deaths of the attorneys.

Lomax discovers that all five of the deceased attorneys died under questionable circumstances: two in the diving accident, and the other three in a car accident, a hunting accident and a suicide, respectively. Lomax cautions Mitch to be careful. Soon after delivering his report to Mitch, Lomax is murdered.

Shortly after Mitch passes his bar exam, Wayne Tarrance, an FBI agent, confronts Mitch. Mitch gradually learns from the FBI that the firm is actually part of the white collar operations of the Morolto crime family of Chicago. The firm's founder, Anthony Bendini, was actually the son-in-law of old man Morolto. He founded the firm in 1944, and since then it has lured new lawyers from poor backgrounds with promises of wealth and security. Although a large part of the firm's clientele is very real, the partners and senior associates are actively involved in a multi-million dollar tax fraud and money laundering scheme. By the time a lawyer is aware of the firm's actual operations, he cannot leave. No lawyer has escaped the firm alive; the five who tried to leave did so after finding out about the firm's ties to organized crime and were killed to keep them from talking. Kozinski and Hodge were actually in contact with the FBI at the time of their murders. The takedown of the Moroltos is such a high priority that the FBI's director, F. Denton Voyles, is personally involved in the case. Mitch learns that his house, office and car are bugged. Mitch and Abby are also routinely followed, making his meetings with the FBI dangerous. Pressure from both the firm and the FBI, which warns him he will almost certainly go to prison if he chooses to ignore them, forces Mitch to make a decision quickly.

Desperate to find a way out and stay alive in the process, Mitch makes a deal with the FBI. He promises to collect enough evidence to indict the firm in return for $2 million and the release of his brother, Ray, from prison. Mitch tells Tarrance that he can obtain enough evidence to indict half the firm right away. However, this evidence will also prove that the firm is part and parcel of a criminal conspiracy. This will give the government probable cause to obtain search warrants for the firm building and files, which in turn will provide the evidence to completely destroy the firm and the Morolto family with a massive RICO indictment. In order to do so, however, Mitch must disclose information about his clients, and thus end his career as a lawyer (though in truth, the attorney–client privilege in most U.S. states, including Tennessee, does not apply to situations where a lawyer knows that a crime is taking place). Working with Lomax's secretary and lover, Tammy Hemphill, Mitch begins to copy confidential documents and makes plans to deliver them to the FBI as planned, eventually copying 10,000 documents. At the same time, Mitch and Abby secretly plan to flee once Mitch turns over the files, since they don't completely trust the FBI to protect them.

Meanwhile, the firm becomes suspicious of Mitch. With the assistance of Tarry Ross, alias "Alfred", a top FBI official who is actually a mole for another crime family, they discover Mitch is indeed working with the FBI. Once Mitch learns of this, he runs from both the FBI and Mafia with his brother and wife. He steals $10 million from the firm's Grand Cayman bank account.

Mitch manages to escape to the Caribbean with the help of Barry Abanks, a scuba diving business owner whose son died in the incident where the Moroltos killed Kozinski and Hodge. Armed with Mitch's evidence, the FBI indicts 51 present and former members of the Bendini firm, as well as 31 alleged members of the Morolto family, for everything from money laundering to mail fraud. At the end, Mitch, Abby and Ray go into hiding and are quietly enjoying their newfound wealth in the Caribbean region.