Lawyers and Literature Narratives of Lawyering: An Inquiry into Lawyer Stories and How We Read Ourselves and Our Profession Knocking on Heaven's Door Fiction "Before the Law," in Franz Kafka, The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces 148-149 (New York: Schocken Paperback, 1961) (Willa Muir and Edwin Muir transl.) B.A.F. Hubbard & E.S. Karnofsky (transl.), Plato's Protagoras 1-8 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) Cinderella (Grimm's Brothers Version) Supplementary Reading James Boyd White, The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression 3-33 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973) John J. Bonsignore, In Parables: Teaching Through Parables, 12 Legal Stud. F. 191 (1988) [online text] Narratives of Schooling Fiction "Centaurs," in J.S. Marcus, The Art of Cartography 17-23 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) (reprinted in Jay Wishingrad (ed.), Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law 97-100 (Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1992) John Grisham, The Rainmaker 1-30 (New York: Doubleday, 1995) Michael Levin, The Socratic Method 3-7, 23-29 (New York: Ballatine Books, 1988) (1987) "Professor Strauss's Gift," in Lowell B. Komie, The Judge's Chambers and Other Stories 87-116 (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1987) Louise Harmon, The Eight O'Clock Class, 23 Legal Stud. F. 405 (1999) [on-line text] Non-Fiction Ruth Knight, Remembering, 40 J. Legal Educ. 97 (1990) Scott Turow, One L (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1977) Richard D. Kahlenberg, Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992) Chris Goodrich, Anarchy and Elegance: Confessions of a Journalist at Yale Law School (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991) Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory 43-73 (New York: Bantam Books, 1983) Supplemental Readings Arthur D. Austin, The Waste Land of Law School Fiction (Book Review), 1989 Duke L. J. 495 The Big Leap: Law School to the World of Work Fiction John Grishman, The Firm 1-16 (New York: Island Books/Dell Publishing, 1991) "The Interview," in Lowell B. Komie, The Judge's Chambers and Other Stories 17-30 (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1987) Susan Wolfe, The Last Billable Hour 1-4 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989) Non-Fiction Brenda Waugh, A Theory of Employment Discrimination, 40 J. Legal Educ. 113 (1990) Inside the Big House Fiction I pass the tall buildings of downtown, wondering what's happening up there in countless firms: associates scrambling about, working eighteen-hour days because the next guy is working twenty; junior partners conferencing with each other about firm strategy; senior partners holding forth in their richly decorated corner offices as teams of younger lawyers wait for their instruction. This is honestly what I wanted when I started law school. I wanted the pressure and power which emanate from working with smart, highly motivated people, all of whom are under stress and strain and deadline. The firm I clerked for last summer was small, only twelve lawyers, but there were lots of secretaries and paralegals and other clerks, and at times I found the chaos exhilarating. I was a very small part of the team, and I longed to one day be the captain. [John Grisham, The Rainmaker 69 (New York: Doubleday, 1995)] Louis Auchincloss, The Great World and Timothy Colt (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987) Louis Auchincloss, Diary of a Yuppie 3-11 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986) "The Fabbri Tape," in Louis Auchincloss, Narcissa & Other Tales 149-169 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983) Louis Auchincloss, "The Legend of Henry Everett," in Ephraim London (ed.), The World of Law 541-554 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960) John Jay Osborne, The Associates 11-15, 26-355, 108110, 146-151, 161-163, 189-205, 227-232, 262-270 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979) Susan Wolfe, The Last Billable Hour 6-47 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989) Guy Garcia, Skin Deep 10-20, 35-36 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988) Joseph O'Neill, This Is the Life 6-8, 17-18, 10-16 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991) Robert Cohen, The Organ Builder 3-13, 50-54, 135-143 222-233 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) Non-Fiction Charles Reich, The Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef 19-47 (1976) James B. Stewart, The Partners (New York: Warner Books, 1983) Lawrence Joseph, Lawyerland: What Lawyers Talk About When They Talk About Law (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997) Cameron Stracher, Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies, and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998) Ellen Joan Pollock, Turks and Brahmins: Upheaval at Milbank, Tweed (New York: American Lawyer Books/Simon and Schuster, 1990) Mark Simenhoff (ed.), My First Year as a Lawyer: Real World Stories from America's Lawyers (New York: Walker and Company, 1994) Richard W. Moll, The Lure of the Law (New York: Viking, 1990) Barry Werth, Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine (New York: Berkley Books, 1999) (1988) Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action (New York: Vintage Books, 1996) (1995) Supplementary Readings William Domnarski, Trouble in Paradise: Wall Street Lawyers and the Fiction of Louis Auchincloss, 12 J. Contemporary Law 243 (1987) A Work World Goes Sour Fiction Sarah Gregory, In Self Defense 11-25 (New York: Singer, 1995) Kate Wilhelm, Death Qualified 75-80 (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1991) "The Cornucopia of Julia K.," in Lowell B. Komie, The Judge's Chambers and Other Stories 43-52 (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1987) Steve Martini, Compelling Evidence 17-26 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992) Christopher Davis, Philadelphia 1-11, 17-33, 158-159, 81-84, 86-93, 106-111, 118-130, (New York: Bantam Books, 1994) Non-Fiction Charles Reich, The Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef 19-48 (New York: Random House, 1976) Is This Winning or Losing? Fiction Albert Camus, The Fall (New York: Vintage Books, 1956) "Puttermesser: Her Work History, Her Ancestry, Her Afterlife," in Cynthia Ozick, Levitation: Five Fictions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) and Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers 3-19 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) (reprinted in Jay Wishingrad (ed.), Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law 82-96 (Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1992)) James Grippando, The Pardon 24-27, 42-45 (New York: HarperCollins, 1994) Sarah Gregory, In Self Defense 11-25 (New York: Singer, 1995) Playing Games Fiction Lisa Scottoline, Running From the Law 1-7 (New York: HarperCollins, 1995) "Partners," in Thomas McGuane, To Skin a Cat 121-135 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986) Harry Crews, All We Need of Hell 11-15, 21-23, 54-59 (New York: Harper & Row, 1987) Lawyers of the South Fiction Pete Dexter, Paris Trout (New York: Penguin Books, 1989) (1988) Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Popular Library, 1962) (1960) Lawyers and Their Social Worlds Fiction "Testimony and Demeanor," in John Casey, Testimony and Demeanor 153-207 (1979) Louis Auchincloss, The Great World and Timothy Colt (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987) Louis Auchincloss, "The Legends of Henry Everett," in Ephraim London (ed.), The World of Law 541-554 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960) Off Mainstreet Fiction Marissa Piesman, Unorthodox Practices 7-10, 21-27, 83-90, 105-116, 165-170, 199, 220-222 (New York: First Pocket Books, 1989) "Thicker Than Liquor," in Wendell Berry, The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership 3-26 (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986) "Kwansa," in John Edgar Wideman, Reuben 1-18 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987) Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter 89-157 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991) William Lashner, Hostile Witness 3-23 (New York: Harper Collins/ ReganBooks, 1995) R. Forster, Beyond Malice 17-26 (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1994) Non-Fiction "A Country Lawyer and How He Grew," in Larry King, The Old Man and Lesser Mortals 110-136 (1974) "Philip Da Vinci," in Studs Terkel, Working 537-540 (1974) Evelyn Williams, Inadmissible Evidence: The Story of the African-American Trial Lawyer Who Defended the Black Liberation Army (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1993) Pauli Murray, Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987) Gerry Spence, The Making of a Country Lawyer (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996) Supplementary Reading Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991) Well-Worn Paths Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilych," in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories 95-155 (New York: New American Library, 1960) Supplementary Reading Paul Gewirtz, A Lawyer's Death, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 205 (1987) (reflecting on Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and the compartmentalization of our lives into professional and private realms) Choices We Make Non-Fiction R. H. Winnick (ed.), Letters of Archibald MacLeish 1907 to 1982 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) "Art and Law," in Archibald MacLeish, Riders on the Earth 82-88 (1978) "A Lawyer Comes of Age," in Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense 1-5 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1941) Departures and Other Unwelcome Matters Fiction Christopher Davis, Philadelphia (New York: Bantam Books, 1994) "Partners," in Thomas McGuane, To Skin a Cat 121-135 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986) Lawyers and Clients Fiction Louis Auchincloss, Diary of a Yuppie 3-11 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986) James A. Michener, Legacy 3-10 (New York: Random House, 1987) "Equitable Awards," in Louis Auchincloss, Narcissa and Other Fables 52-70 (1983) William Walker, A Dime to Dance By 36-43 (New York: Penguin Books, 1985) Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder 31-56 (New York: Dell Publishing, 1959) James Welch, The Indian Lawyer 63-72 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990) Fredrick Busch, Closing Argument 38-43 (New York: Penguin Books, 1992) Supplementary Reading Dawson Martin, The Lawyer as Friend, 32 Rutgers L. Rev. 695 (1979) (an essay on the amoral role of lawyers drawing on The Fall) The Lawyer as Politician Fiction Scott Spencer, Waking the Dead (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986) Women Lawyers Fiction Sarah Gregory, In Self Defense 11-25 (New York: Signet, 1995) Mary Ehmbland, All Manner of Riches 293-342 (New York: Viking, 1987) Gini Hartzmark, Final Option 1-2, 14-16, 53-54, 79-83 (New York: Ivy Books, 1994) Mimi Lavenda Latt, Powers of Attorney 11-15, 95-96 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) The Messiness of Domestic Discord Fiction Avery Corman, Kramer vs. Kramer 82-84, 99, 112-113, 122-125, 175-184, 187-192, 194-247 (New York: New American Library, 1978) Sue Miller, The Good Mother 232-280 (New York: Dell, 1986) Lynna Williams, Sole Custody, 268 Atlantic Monthly 78 (September, 1991) Bernard Cooper, Picking Plumbs: Fathers and Sons and Their Lovers, Harpers 68 (August, 1992) Criminal Law and the Lawyers Who Practice It Fiction "Tell me, Harry, why do you do it? Why do you do criminal law?" He makes a face. Like he's never considered this before. "The money's good," he says. I laugh. "Sure. I've seen the palatial digs you call home. No, really, why do you do it?" It's in the blood, I guess. Besides, I like the people." What Harry means is, he has a taste for "felonious voyeurism." It happens. Lawyers, judges, cops, and jurors all find themselves titillated from time to time by the stories of violence, drugs, and sex. The criminal side of the law provides a window on the dark side of life that exists nowhere else. But there is, in my mind, something more than this to Harry's quest. Harry Hinds, I think, is a closet guardian of the underdog. There's a compelling psychic identification with the losers of society here, gratification in squaring off against the state to save some poor fool from a long stretch in the joint. To Harry, this is sweet music. Whether or not one agrees with his work, Harry's motives have social redemption. He's a man moved by the view that prisons are filled with those who are the victims of their environment, child abusers who were themselves abused, druggies weened on the stuff by parents caught in their own chemical cycle. As Harry rises to leave, to rejoin his clients, I realize that even with all of his foibles I am a little envious of this man. Harry Hinds has a clear vision of purpose to his life, a focus that at this moment, in the vortex of forces pulling upon me, I do not possess. [Steve Martini, Compelling Evidence 47 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992)] George V. Higgins, Kennedy for the Defense 1-14 (New York: Ballantine, 1980) ______________, Defending Billy Ryan 3-9, 19-22, 27-28, 33-42, 50 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992) Harold Mehling, Assumption of Guilt 7-27, 68-69, 75-77, 80-81 (New York: Jove Books, 1994) Nancy Taylor Rosenberg, Mitigating Circumstances 1-18 (New York: Signet, 1993) Grief Stockley, Probable Cause 1-7, 40-57 (New York: First Ballatine Books, 1993) (1992) Steve Martini, Compelling Evidence 46-53, 88-92, 104-106, 127-134 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992) Gary Provost, Without Mercy 277-302 (New York: Pocket Books, 1990) Richard Parrish, Versions of the Truth 25-39, 69-80 (New York: Onyx Book, 1994) Jay Brandon, Rules of Evidence 3-39 (New York: Pocket Books, 1992) Phillip Margolin, The Last Innocent Man 14-17, 24-25, 50-55, 68-69, 84-85, 242-243, 254-257 (New York: Bantam Books, 1995) (1994) Alan Dershowitz, The Advocate's Devil 1-41 (New York: Warner Books, 1994) Non-Fiction Seymour Wishman, Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer (New York: Penguin Books, 1982) (1981) Thomas P. Puccio, In the Name of the Law: Confessions of a Trial Lawyer 13-41 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995) The Strange Within Fiction Herman Melville, "Bartleby, The Scrivener," in Jay Wishingrad (ed.), Legal Fictions: Short Stories About Lawyers and the Law 199-207 (Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1992) Frederick Busch, Closing Arugments 1-27 (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991) John Edgar Wideman, Reuben 1-7 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987) Lawyer Outsiders Non-Fiction Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991) Oscar Zeta Acosta, The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972) Pauli Murray, The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987) "A Country Lawyer and How He Grew," in Larry King, The Old Man and Lesser Mortals 110-136 (New York: Delta, 1975) Supplemental Reading David O. Friedrichs, Narrative Jurisprudence and Other Heresies: Legal Education at the Margin, 40 J. Legal Educ. 3 (1990) Thomas Shaffer, The Ethics of Dissent and Friendship in the American Professions, 88 W. Va. L. Rev. 623 (1986) Kathryn Abrams, Hearing the Call of Stories, 79 Calif. L. Rev. 971, 1005-1012 (1991) Robert Lefcourt (ed), Law Against the People: Essays to Demystify Law, Order and the Courts (New York: Vintage Books 1971) Bruce Wasserstein & Mark J. Green (eds.), With Justice for Some: An Indictment of the Law By Young Advocates (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970) Jonathan Black (ed.), Radical Lawyers: Their Role in the Movement and in the Courts (New York: Avon Books, 1971) Lawyer Heroes Fiction Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (Philadephia: J.B. Lippincott, 1960) Non-Fiction "Alone," from F. Lee Bailey, The Defense Never Rests 7-8 (New York: Stein and Day, 1971) Norman Sheresky, On Trial: Masters of the Courtroom (1977) Arthur Lewis, The Worlds of Chippy Patterson 1-4 (New York: Pocket Book, 1973) Gerry Spence and Anthony Polk, Gunning for Justice 1-84 (1982) "A Liberal Gets a Liberal Education," in Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense 49-83 (1941) "A Country Lawyer and How He Grew," in Larry King, The Old Man and Lesser Mortals 110-136 (New York: Delta, 1975) Robert Bolt, A Man for All Season: A Play (New York: Vintage, 1962) Finding a Life Fiction Walker Percy, The Second Coming (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980) Appendix I: A Way of Reading--James Boyd White "A Way of Reading," in James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community 3-23 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) James Boyd White, Thinking About Language, 96 Yale L. J. 1960 (1987) James Boyd White, Intellectual Integration, 82 Northwestern U. L. Rev. 1 (1987) James Boyd White, The Judicial Opinion and the Poem: Ways of Reading, Ways of Life, 82 Mich. L. Rev.f 1669 (1984) James Boyd White, Judicial Criticism, 20 Georgia L. Rev. 835 (1986) James Boyd White, What Can a Lawyer Learn from Literature? (Book Review), 102 Harv. L. Rev. 2014 (1989) Appendix II: Ways of Reading L.H. LaRue, Teaching Legal Ethics by Negative Example: John Dean's Blind Ambition, 10 Legal Stud. F. 315 (1986) Appendix III: A Note on Selected Authors Avery Corman is a novelist and writer of documentary film scripts. He resides in New York City. Christopher Davis is a novelist and lives in New York City. Guy Garcia was born in Los Angeles in 1955 and attended the University of California at Berkeley. At the time Skin Deep was published he was a staff writer for Time magazine residing in New York City. R.A. Forster was an advertising executive for thirteen years and is now a full-time writer. Her husband is a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge. Beyond Malice, her twelfth novel, is her first legal mystery. James Grippando is a trial lawyer and partner in the Miami office of Steel Hector & Davis, one of Florida's major law firms. He lives in Coral Gables, Florida. Gini Hartzmark attended the law and business schools at the University of Chicago. She writes business and economics textbooks and a contributor to the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune and other national magazines. Ms. Hartzmark's first novel was Principal Defense. She lives in Arizona. Phillip Margolin is a practicing criminal defense attorney in Portland, Oregon. He has tried high-profile murder cases and claims to be the first attorney in Oregon to use the battered woman's syndrome as a defense in a homicide case. Richard Parrish began practicing law in Arizona in 1971. In 1977, he created the Economic Crime/Organized Crime Unit of the Pima County Attorney's Office. He practiced in Tucson, Arizona. Marissa Piesman is a practicing real-estate lawyer in New York City. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg worked for the Dallas Police Department, the New Mexico State Police, The Pentura California Police Department and as an investigative probation officer in Ventura County, California. She is now a novelist. Lisa Scottoline was a trial lawyer at a large Philadelphia firm and clerked for federal and state judges. She was an honors undergraduate and graduate of the law school at the University of Pennsylvania. In law school she served on the law review. She is now a writer of legal novels, one of which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Kate Wilhelm, a novelist, was born in Louisville, Kentucky. She now lives in Eugene, Oregon. Susan Wolfe received an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Stanford University in 1981. She practiced law for four years and left the practice of law to become a writer. She now lives in Palo Alto, California and practices law part time.    Lawyers and Literature Home Page