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''I practiced law just like Jake,'' says Grisham, speaking in the garage of his home outide Charlottesville, Va., and puffing a cigar (a surprising habit, since his new novel, The Runaway Jury, savages the tobacco industry). ''I was struggling to pay the bills and dreaming of a big, high-profile case.''

Grisham was still a working attorney in 1984 when the idea for Kill came to him as he watched a young girl testify at her rapist's trial. ''I wanted personally to shoot the rapist,'' Grisham, who has a son and a daughter, says in an author's note. ''I became obsessed with the idea of a father's retribution.'' A Time to Kill, his maiden novel, was published five years later without fanfare but reappeared after the success of The Firm and rode the paperback best-seller list for two years. It's now his third-best-selling novel, having sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Grisham based Jake on himself (''We both drive SAABs,'' he wrote in the foreword. ''We've both lost sleep over clients and vomited in courthouse rest rooms.''); and Kill remains his most personal novel. He refused to sell it to Hollywood until Schumacher adapted The Client for the screen in 1994. Schumacher, 56, and Grisham, 41, became unlikely friends — the former a warm, ponytailed New Yorker-turned-Hollywoodite who cleaned up in 1970 by burying his syringes in Central Park, the latter a good ol' boy from Jonesboro, Ark., who would rather coach Little League than watch movies. But Schumacher has also dealt with race relations in his work; he took an unflinching look at white rage in the 1993 psychodrama Falling Down.

In 1994, a decade after he'd sat down to write the book, Grisham accepted a $6 million offer for the movie rights — on the condition that Schumacher direct. ''Once I realized Joel was someone I could trust, it was pretty easy [to sell],'' says Grisham. ''Then you throw in 6 million bucks and it gets a whole lot easier.'' Still, the author insisted on contractual co-approval (with Schumacher) of the script and the casting of Jake; Carl Lee Hailey, the accused; and Lucien Wilbanks, Jake's mentor.

Casting was easy at first. Bullock, a friend of the director's, accepted the smallish role of Ellen Roark, a rich law student who helps Jake navigate the complexities of the case. (Still, her leading-lady compensation of $6 million makes her the film's highest-paid performer.) ''The character is quietly wild and strong, which is hard for me,'' says Bullock, ''and that's something I'd needed to do for a long time.'' Spacey signed on as ruthless DA Rufus Buckley, along with Oliver Platt (from Schumacher's Flatliners) as the outrageous divorce lawyer Harry Rex Vonner; Ashley Judd (Heat) as Jake's wife; and Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot) as his long-suffering secretary.

At first, Schumacher thought of Paul Newman for the role of Lucien — the liberal, hard-drinking, disbarred lawyer from whom Jake has obtained his practice — but then he reconsidered. ''We didn't approach him seriously because Mike Ovitz [Newman's former agent] always told me Newman doesn't like to do movies with violence,'' says Schumacher, ''and this is called A Time to Kill.'' Finally Donald Sutherland applied for the role and won the approval of director and author. They also agreed on Jackson without a fight. But there was still no Jake.


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