Book review: In 'Kill the Lawyers', slick, sly and sleep-deprived lawyers win the day

Honoré Daumier's painting 'A Meeting of Lawyers', 1858-62. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Kill the Lawyers by Shishir Vayttaden (Bloomsbury India, 208 pages, Rs 499) is just the quick read you need now. With Indian financial markets seeing a fresh burst of optimism and a boom of IPOs, you might wonder if you've missed your train to financial success and fortune. Leave your worries aside and escape into a world of irreverent takes on unpredictable corporate takeovers, shady boardroom dealings and backroom negotiations  with behind the scenes dealmakers and lawyers. Kill the lawyers — as its tag line states — brings you “small tales from big law”.

The book is an entirely fictional account of Edwin Edamarra, a junior partner in a large firm, working days and nights, helping clients and friends coax victories out of seemingly hopeless situations. The Jim Jam-obsessed protagonist is annoying, foul-mouthed,  shady,  inconsiderate, but clearly has a heart of gold. A rising star in the legal profession, he not only cares for the law, he actually knows it. His close reading of opaque regulations and neglected statutes wins the day for everyone, from the shadiest of the big corporates to his building kaamwaali (help) who is thrown out of work. He is supported by his long suffering colleague — a young associate Anjali Mathur, who is expected to also sacrifice sleep and sanity in the altar of her boss, her boss’s boss and their clients. There are other colourful characters — an old  Bombay “operator” and senior partner Amit Adhikari, who, no matter where you work, you are certain is exactly your boss.  Sample this line — “Amit Adhikari had borne the curse of unacknowledged genius for too long. The fact that he possessed no genius at all made it harder to endure the lack of acknowledgement.”

Each of the nine fictional stories in the book seem very real — bringing to the readers a picture of big law-firm life, Indian corporate law and Bombay boardrooms. Vayttaden’s long experience as a corporate lawyer brings in authenticity. At the same time, he easily drops his lawyer hat and turns into a slick storyteller. Appropriate  and necessary liberties are taken with laws, real-life incidents, historical incidents to shape them into an entertaining story. The characters are ridiculous caricatures but still so real and lived in. The book is smartly plotted. Nine stories, in a zig-zag timeline tell separate stories, while also being interlinked. Each story teases out more nuggets of information about each character, specifically protagonist Edwin Edmarra and his motivations.  The book is wryly funny and amusing.

There is also so much about the book that should make it a terrible read. Author Vayttaden, whose other book is SEBI’s Takeover Code (a serious and information-packed reference work for professionals and academics), does not shy away from telling you what Section 44A sub clause 1 says and to make things worse quotes more sub clauses and uses Latin terms like “non obstante”. He refers to “the firm’s database of precedents, details and information so technical and mundane even lawyers are not interested in it. Yet, you are drawn in. The episodic nature of the book works — keeping the technical jargon from becoming too alienating.  His sentences are long and convoluted (even if not as bad as the contracts drafted by  boss Amit Adhikari).  There are references all over the place — to Shakespeare, movies, books — with very little attempt to let the reader in on the inside joke. Despite all of this, instead of putting the reader off, you can’t help but feel more drawn into this world. You can't help but like the ride through the dizzying and exciting and simultaneously boring and pedestrian Bombay  corporate world.

A book about the law, especially capital markets, authored by a corporate lawyer, and written with much style, Kill the Lawyers keeps the reader engaged as it unfolds like a thriller. In each story, Edwin Edmarra leaves you clues, crumbs of evidence leading to the grand denouement, even if the grand reveal is that his rich investor clients went to bank laughing. The book is warm and engaging. Somehow you care about Edwin, Anjali and the shady clients, even if the stakes themselves are somewhat petty. Like any good law firm, the book makes you care about who beats who in the race to bottom in corporate greed. Edwin Ednmarra is always ethical, even if never straightforward. Reading the book feels like sitting with a team of lawyers, spilling their clients deepest and darkest secrets to you, drunk after a deal closing high on adrenaline and alcohol. Each situation and deal is new but the cast of characters are consistent and behaving the way you would expect them to.

This book hits the sweet spot like the show Suits did. The plots are silly, but not dumb. The inner monologues and narration makes you roll your eyes, but is just clever enough to make you chuckle. With some romance and drama, and more stories of Edwin Edamarra, this book is ripe for a sequel or at least is excellent starting material for an OTT show — bringing you India’s Harvey Specter.