Personal injury law is not a charitable enterprise. To a lawyer working on a contingency fee and paying the expenses of a case himself, it is crucial that the defendant either have assets, preferably a lot of them, or a big insurance policy. To Schlichtmann, having Grace and Beatrice as defendants in the case was like learning that a woman his mother kept trying to set him up with had a huge trust fund.

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, loc. 338