Mitchell Y. McDeere is a highly intelligent young man who overcame the obstacles of poverty and a broken home to become the third in his class at Harvard Law School. When graduation approaches, Mitch is offered multiple jobs with several firms, including Wall Street firms in New York and prestigious firms in Chicago. However, Mitch chooses a small law firm in Memphis, Tennessee because it is close to his wife’s family, they practice mostly tax law, and because the financial package they offer him is hard to ignore. Mitch is tired of being poor, tired of struggling, and he wants to prove himself to his wife’s judgmental parents. Mitch is so seduced by the financial package at Bendini, Lambert & Locke that he never stops to question the oddities in the offer, such as the fact that the firm only hires white men or the only people who leave the firm do so through retirement or death.

Mitch is young and naive, but his high level of intelligence gives him insight that he finds difficult to ignore. When the FBI reaches out to him, he wants to believe the partners of the firm when they tell him it is only about some of the tax breaks the firm finds for their clients, but Mitch knows enough about the law to understand there is more to the FBI’s interest.