 Simakis praised the book for having more depth of character than Grisham 's novels customarily do . She compares the protagonist to Mitch McDeere from The Firm and Rudy Baylor from The Rainmaker . Memmott says that most of the claimants that they find are unsympathetic , but a few are from somewhat sympathetic immigrant families . Simakis notes that Wally trades sex for legal services with one claimant . Harshaw says that the book is a bit sentimental and comparatively lacking in terms of secondary character development for Grisham . Larry Orenstein of Canada 's Globe and Mail notes that on the dramatic scale this book has instances of laugh out loud humor that make it more like Boston Legal than The Practice , which Boston Legal was spun off from . 
