Rudy Baylor's a young lawyer who goes to work for an ambulance chaser. He brings with him a case wherein a woman wants to sue an insurance company, that stalled on paying her son's medical bills, eventually he got too ill that he's now terminal.
Rudy signs two clients. One is his new elderly landlady, who needs a revised will drawn. The other is a poor family, Dot and Buddy Black, whose insurance bad faith case could be worth several million dollars in damages.
Rudy has just one case, one of insurance bad faith. It could be worth several million dollars in damages, but his personal life is falling to pieces and he is about to declare himself bankrupt. When his employer is raided by the police and the FBI, he and Deck set up a practice themselves.
Rudy Baylor is about to graduate from Memphis State Law School. He secures a position with a Memphis law firm, who then loses his job when the firm is bought out by the large Memphis law firm Tinley Britt. As one of the few members of his class without a job lined up, a desperate Rudy is introduced to J.
To earn his fee, Rudy is required to hunt for potential clients at the local hospital and sign them up to personal injury lawsuits. He is introduced to Deck Shifflet, a less-than-ethical former insurance assessor who received a law degree but doesn't practice law, having failed to pass the bar exam six times.