I recently re-read John Grisham’s masterpiece – The Firm. It was just as great as it was 25 years ago. Having read all 33 of Grisham’s books (including his riveting non-fiction The Innocent Man), I vote The Firm as his best, with a lot of very close seconds. [Others in my top 5: The Rainmaker (“You must be stupid, stupid, stupid!”); The Broker; A Painted House; The Associate]

When I read The Firm 25 years ago I would have never paid attention to Grisham’s description of the subjects on the Tennessee bar exam. But this time around, when I saw that they included insurance law, I had a holy cow moment

Of course, insurance is not really on the Tennessee bar exam. But it’s not surprising that Grisham said it was. He readily admits that he doesn’t do much research for his books and resorts to just making stuff up. To see a great example of this, read Camino Island and then the Author’s Note at the end.

So while insurance law is not on the Volunteer State’s bar exam, it’s nice to see that someone thought it was worthy. In fact, that’s probably why The Firm was dubbed a legal thriller.