A few moments later, Doug explains to Kyle how modern budgeting works at banks (and companies with billions of dollars0 these days.
Doug states unequivocally: "Kyle, my boy, look at it this way. Our biggest client is BXL, the seventh-largest company in the world, sales last year of $200 billion. Very smart businessmen who have a budget for everything. They live by budgets. They are fanatics about budgets. Last year their budget for legal fees was one percent of their total sales, or about $2 billion. We didn't get all of that, because they use twenty different law firms around the world, but we got our share. Guess what happens if they don't spend the amount they budget, if their legal fees fall short? Tehir in-house lawyers monitor our billings, and if our numbers are low, they call up and raise hell. What are we, the lawyers doing wrong? Aren't we properly protecting them? The point is, they expect to spend the money. If we don't take it, then it screws up their budgets, they get worried, and maybe they start looking for another firm, one that will work harder at billing them. You follow?"
Kyle nods: "Yes."
In concluding, I will note that some years ago, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, indicated in one of her articles that the unveiling of the Pentagon Papers in the 1960s sounded like a John Grisham novel. I think this reveals that many parts of John Grisham's book read like modern American non-fiction.
http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/321502_amy28.html
Daniel Ellsburg has stated this in most of his speeches all over the United States over recent decades: "The equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington, not only in the Pentagon, but in the CIA, the State Department and elsewhere. My message is to them: Take the risk, reveal the truth under the lies of your own bosses and your superiors, obey your oath to the Constitution, which every one of those officials took, not to the commander in chief, but to the Constitution of the United States."
That message of taking the risk, revealing truth under the lies of your own bosses and superiors, and obeying your oath and constitution are common themes in John Grisham novels.
