Jimmy stayed in the courthouse bathroom for no less than twenty minutes, constantly practicing his closing argument, until an impatient judge urged the bailiff to come and interrupt him. He had been working as a lawyer for some time, but Jimmy was still an unknown third-tier lawyer who could only take court-appointed cases.When he returned to the courtroom, he tried to convince the jurors with three points. First, the three defendants were only nineteen years old and had broken into the plaintiff’s shop under the influence of hormones; second, no personal injury was caused during the entire incident; third, the plaintiff’s shop was open 24 hours a day. He hoped these three points would make the jury consider the future of the three defendant college students and give them a chance to reform. After hearing these words, the jurors showed no reaction, and the plaintiff’s lawyer also remained silent.
Subsequently, the plaintiff’s lawyer stood up and played a selfie video in which the defendants showed off to their classmates after the crime. In the video, the three defendants, after drinking, broke into the funeral home run by the plaintiff and cut off the head of a corpse to use as a toy. Therefore, Jimmy’s carefully prepared closing argument had no chance of being accepted by the jury, and the three defendants were sentenced to prison for their perverted acts.
Jimmy, who had never even attended college, worked very hard. Even in such a hopelessly lost case, he still fought for the defendants with reason. However, after months of hard work, his earnings were pitifully meager. Living in straitened circumstances, he still drove a car that was almost scrapped and often argued with Mike, the parking lot attendant, over a few dollars in parking fees. His office was set up in the storage room of a beauty salon—with his income, that was the only place he could afford to rent.
Today, he finally got a big case. After receiving the call, Jimmy made various excuses to arrange a meeting with the client at a café. The clients were Mr. and Mrs. Kettelman. Craig, the husband, was the county finance director, and since $1.6 million had mysteriously gone missing from the accounts, he naturally became a key person under investigation.
At the café, Jimmy talked persuasively to convince Craig to hire a lawyer to prepare for any possible bad situations that might arise later. But just as Craig was about to sign the contract, his wife Betsy stopped him. Betsy wanted to think about it more, and Jimmy didn’t want to seem eager, so he had to hand a matchbox printed with his advertisement to Craig with a hint of disappointment, hoping that Craig would come back to him.
On his way back to the office by car, Jimmy encountered two petty crooks trying to stage a fake accident . One of them crashed into the windshield on a skateboard, and the other held a camera and threatened to call the police. Unfortunately for them, they had picked the wrong person—before becoming a lawyer, Jimmy was a veteran con artist, so how could he fall for such a trick? Seeing that they couldn’t get any advantage, the two crooks quickly ran away.
Jimmy, who was furious, returned to his office in the beauty salon and casually flipped through the mail that had piled up over the past few days. Besides bills and advertisements, there was an envelope from Hamlin & McGill Law Firm, containing a check for $26,000. This made him even angrier.
Jimmy’s elder brother, Chuck McGill, was once a brilliant lawyer. Years ago, he co-founded this law firm with Howard Hamlin. But later, Chuck developed a mental illness—he had an extreme fear of electromagnetic radiation and couldn’t tolerate any electrical devices around him. For the past two years, Chuck had to stay in a house without electricity. Jimmy, who had always gotten into trouble and relied on Chuck to clean up the mess, had no choice but to mend his ways, find a legitimate source of income, and take on the responsibility of taking care of his brother.
This check was supposed to be living allowance for Chuck. But Jimmy knew that his brother would never go back to work at the law firm—Chuck was entitled to take back one-third of the firm’s shares, which were worth $17 million, not just a measly $26,000. Jimmy stormed into the firm to argue, but when facing Howard, Jimmy’s biggest weakness was that Chuck himself had no intention of reclaiming the shares. Chuck would rather live a poor life than let the firm go bankrupt due to paying such a huge sum of money, leaving hundreds of employees out of work.
To make matters worse, after the fruitless quarrel with Howard, Jimmy found Betsy and Craig also at the firm—they had already hired Howard as their consulting lawyer. No one in the entire firm looked up to Jimmy; only Howard’s attractive associate lawyer, Kim had a slight fondness for him. But this fondness was only private and couldn’t be noticed by Howard.
In the evening, Jimmy brought food to Chuck’s house. As usual, he put his phone and other items into the mailbox outside the door, and before entering, he had to touch a grounding wire to remove the static electricity from his body. Walking into the dark house, he saw Chuck in the study, with a kerosene lamp lit and using an old-fashioned typewriter—Jimmy was filled with frustration that he couldn’t express. Howard had already visited Chuck: not only did he get Chuck to agree to accept a weekly living allowance of over $800, but he also brought the matchbox that Jimmy had given to Craig. This was a blatant mockery, and Jimmy, who had suppressed his anger all day, finally lost his temper.
The next day, Jimmy found the two petty crooks who had tried to stage the fake accident. These two had limited intelligence, so Jimmy personally designed a fake accident plan for them, with the target being Betsy, who drove to pick up and drop off her children from school every day. As long as the fake accident succeeded, Jimmy would "happen to pass by" and help Betsy solve the problem. Betsy would likely hand over the consulting lawyer contract to Jimmy because of this, and Jimmy would then give $2,000 from his commission to the two crooks—it was a so-called win-win plan.
But man proposes, God disposes. Jimmy never expected something to go wrong. The two fools watched as the car crashed into them, but instead of getting out to check, the driver stepped on the gas and fled. So they chased after the car all the way, hitching a ride on the back of another vehicle with their skateboards, and didn’t forget to call Jimmy to report the situation while chasing. Upon hearing Jimmy say that a hit-and-run would lead to more compensation, the two simply abandoned Jimmy and decided to negotiate with the driver themselves.
When they saw the car pull into a family’s driveway, they immediately rushed over aggressively. But when the car door opened, an old lady got out trembling, speaking in Spanish. The two crooks became even more arrogant—they deliberately stood on tiptoes and shouted to demand money. The old lady seemed frightened; she turned around and walked toward the door. The crooks were not polite either—they directly walked into the house to get money.
The actual situation deviated from Jimmy’s plan, and now he couldn’t even contact the crooks who had staged the fake accident. Jimmy drove around randomly in the surrounding area, and finally saw a car of the same model as Betsy’s parked by the side of the road, with two skateboards left on the lawn by the road. "This must be the place," Jimmy quickly got out of the car and knocked on the door. While knocking, he claimed to be a court staff member, thinking that this would allow him to take control of the situation. But when the door opened, a handgun was pressed against his head, and a large hand reached out and pulled him forcefully into the house.