Rudy Baylor and Deck Shifflet establish their own law firm on a shoestring, while the firm they have left is under federal scrutiny. The venture begins with a one-year arrangement, secondhand furnishings, and more expenses than income; it soon gives Rudy a workplace from which to carry the Black family’s insurance case into court. Its early contrast—small practice, immense corporate opponent—becomes central to the episode’s significance.

Decision and Circumstances

With federal agents watching their former office, Rudy and Deck remove files and prepare to leave. They are not certain what will happen next: Deck has been unable to reach Bruiser Stone, and the two men are wary of surveillance. Against that unsettled background, Rudy proposes that he and Deck try working together for a year, with a thirty-day walkout clause if either becomes dissatisfied. Deck eagerly shakes his hand. Rudy is more cautious, hoping to build a steady practice by serving clients and encouraging Deck to study for the bar, rather than letting the firm become an extension of Deck’s habit of chasing accident cases.

The partnership also has an important professional imbalance. Rudy is the lawyer; Deck, whom the new stationery identifies as a paralegal, is not licensed. Rudy intends to run the practice responsibly and gradually encourage Deck to take the profession more seriously. The plan is an aspiration rather than a settled transformation: Deck has already spent a week quietly removing belongings from the old office, and the new firm begins while their former employer’s troubles are unfolding.

The New Office

Deck finds four rooms totaling about a thousand square feet above Buried Treasures, an antique shop in a neighborhood where several buildings remain boarded up or burned out. The space has hardwood floors and twelve-foot ceilings. Rudy’s office is about fifteen feet square, with a window facing the street; another room is meant for conferences, and the front room could serve as reception or later accommodate a secretary. Deck is intent on making the space workable, pointing out where paint is needed and proposing a restrained shade of white to keep costs down.

The landlord, an antique dealer downstairs, offers tables, chairs, lamps, and filing cabinets on monthly payments. The arrangement makes furnishing the office possible without a large initial outlay, though Deck notes that the building has been robbed before. He has already visited a printer and brought back stationery designs: Rudy’s name appears prominently, while Deck’s is listed in the corner as a paralegal. They consider ordering five hundred sheets and envelopes, installing a phone line, and putting off a copier and fax machine. Deck proposes an answering machine costing about eighty dollars and a First Trust bank account with free checks and interest on the balance. The office is being assembled one practical decision at a time.

First-Month Finances and Work

The first month produces only $1,200 in fees: $400 from a shoplifting matter Deck brought in, $200 from a DUI case, $500 from a workers’ compensation file taken from Bruiser Stone’s office as they left, and $100 for wills Rudy prepared for a couple who wandered upstairs from the antique shop. Rudy records the payment for the wills as his first ethically earned fee. The modest total makes clear how little room the fledgling practice has for error.

Start-up expenses reach $4,250. They include $500 in rent, $400 for stationery and business cards, about $550 for utility connections and deposits, $800 for a leased phone system and its first bill, $300 for the first installment on furnishings, $200 in bar dues, $300 in miscellaneous costs, $750 for a fax machine, $400 for a basic computer setup and first month’s rent, and $50 for a restaurant-guide advertisement. Deck calculates the figures to the penny and estimates continuing monthly overhead at roughly $1,900 once the initial costs have passed. The business has spent more than three times what it has collected in its first month.

Deck tries to make himself useful in nearly every routine task: he handles typing, answers the phone, gets coffee, sweeps, and takes copying to the printer. He lives at the office and is eager to help Rudy, but does not study for the bar exam and changes the subject when they discuss it. His energy keeps the practice functioning; Rudy’s effort to shape that energy into a more conventional legal partnership remains unresolved.

A Base for the Black Case

The new firm’s importance quickly exceeds its limited premises and first-month accounts. Rudy’s work on the Black family’s claim concerns a form of low-cost, door-to-door insurance sold to lower-income customers. Max Leuberg explains that only a small share of bad-faith denials reach court, in part because policyholders may be wary of lawyers and the legal system. He also warns that Tennessee juries are conservative about punitive damages, making a claim against a wealthy insurer difficult even when the policyholder’s medical costs are covered. The case therefore places the new practice in a struggle between a family with a serious loss and a corporation with far greater resources.

As the litigation advances, Rudy uses the firm’s work to expose the insurer’s procedures and the evidence it withheld. In testimony, Jackie Lemancyzk describes a 1991 policy of initially denying claims above $1,000 for a year, regardless of their legitimacy, and says the plan generated about $40 million. Rudy later produces the complete Section U material after a company executive confirms that the section was removed from the manual provided to him. Donny Ray Black’s recorded testimony, shown to the jury on a twenty-inch screen, makes the consequences of the dispute immediate and personal.

In closing, Rudy sets the company’s available cash, reserves, and undistributed surpluses at $475 million, alongside an admitted net worth of $450 million, and argues that punitive damages must be large enough to affect a corporation of that scale. The firm’s founding does not guarantee financial stability—the first month shows the opposite—but it gives Rudy an independent place from which to bring the case forward. The small office above the antique shop becomes the starting point for a courtroom challenge to a claims-denial system that depended on many policyholders never obtaining legal help.