Shia LaBeouf to Be The Associate

Shia LaBeouf has signed on to portray the title role in the big screen version of John Grisham's upcoming legal thriller The Associate.

According to Variety,  LaBeouf will play a student who's about to graduate from Yale Law School. In typical Grisham fashion, however, he's manipulated into accepting a job at a top law firm and given privileged information about a multibillion-dollar lawsuit.

The novel itself will be published in January by Random House.