A second trial begins in November 1975 against French left-wing revolutionary Pierre Goldman, accused of several armed robberies and the death of two chemists.
A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry 'The Blade' Muldano, a Mafia hit-man. Before Jerome shoots himself, he tells Mark where the body of a Senator is buried. Clifford shoots himself and Mark is found at the scene, and both the FBI and the Mafia quickly realize that Mark probably knows more than he says.
When cocky military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee and his co-counsel, Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway, are assigned to a murder case, they uncover a hazing ritual that could implicate high-ranking officials such as shady Col. Nathan Jessep.
Savannah lawyer Rick Magruder is at a party celebrating his courtroom victory defending a cop killer when a member of the catering staff, Mallory Doss, discovers her car has been stolen. Having had a few drinks, Magruder offers to give her a lift home, a decision that turns into a one night stand. Rick soon learns that her nut-case father, Dixon, seems to have begun threatening her again. Rick puts the force of his law firm behind Mallory, who he barely knows, has Dixon picked up by the police, and subpoenas the girl's belligerent ex-husband, Pete, to testify against the old man. Dixon is put away in an asylum. However, he soon escapes, putting the lives of everyone who conspired against him in jeopardy.
When Rudy Baylor, a young attorney with no clients, goes to work for a seedy ambulance chaser, he wants to help the parents of a terminally ill boy in their suit against an insurance company. But to take on corporate America, Rudy and a scrappy paralegal must open their own law firm.
Set in New Orleans, this is the story of a mysterious man, Nick Easter (Cusack) gets himself not only on the jury of a landmark case against a gun manufacturer, but as the foreman, in an attempt to influence the other jury members to vote a certain way (in partnership with his girlfriend, Marlee, played by Weisz, who tries to swindle the attorneys outside the jury). The case involves the widow of a man killed in an office shooting suing the gun manufacturer of the weapon that was used, under the claim that they knew the store that sold it was not obeying the laws about firearm sales.
Michael Clayton is an in-house "fixer" at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen's dirtiest work at the behest of the firm's co-founder Marty Bach. Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class action suit that Clayton's firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach's brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life.
Cast: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack
Directed by Tony Gilroy