Hitting the Lawyer Books

My friend Bill Adams, a long-time Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney and the much-beloved “Philosopher King of Portland,” once told me that life is like a conveyor belt.  You get on and if along the way you discover that you can bake, then you get off and you are a baker.  If you can build, you get off and you are a builder; etc., etc.  If, however, you can’t actually do anything, then you continue to ride the conveyor belt of life straight on to law school. 

Having taken that ride myself, I have always admired people who can do tangible things.  People with the kind of skills that would guarantee them a seat on an overcrowded lifeboat.  As such, I am drawn to television shows like Top Chef (cooks), Wheeler Dealers (auto mechanics), and Restored (carpenters/ plumbers/masons/roofers/landscapers) in which people are doing under pressure and hopefully under budget that which I don’t have the skills to do under any circumstances.  What I don’t watch are shows about lawyers.  Even if I was inclined to do so, my wife wouldn’t let me.  She claims that I ruin them for her by saying things like, “oh come on!”, or “that would never happen”, or just “pul-leeeease.”  When she quotes me saying things like that, she uses the voice that all long-suffering wives use when they are imitating/mocking their goofball husbands (it’s like the voice of Lenny from Of Mice and Men but with the tone and attitude of a complete know-it-all blowhard).  I don’t remember ever saying any such things (or sounding that way) but I do recall the occasional harrumph, chortle or highly audible sigh.  In fairness, I doubt cooks, auto mechanics, or building contractors are allowed to watch Top Chef, Wheeler Dealers, or Restored with their significant others either.

Lawyers have skills too.  The kind of skills that might be used to convince the rest of the people in the aforementioned overcrowded lifeboat not to toss them overboard (or to toss somebody else instead).  Our skill set is developed through and honed by reading.  We are among the last of a dying breed of readers.  It’s what we have to do when we’re at work.  It’s also what a great many of us choose to do when we’re off work.  It is my leisure activity of choice.  I am rarely without the book I am reading (which I carry tucked under the waistband of my pants in the small of my back) and another book “on deck” (which I do not stuff in my pants) for when I am finished with the first one.  I am allowed to read books about lawyers.  I have read quite a few.  I am not a particularly good audience for books set in the courtroom any more than I imagine plumbers are for books set in the bathroom, but I have read a few - very few - that I enjoyed a great deal.  If you either take pleasure in or haven’t given up the search for pleasurable stories which feature lawyers and lawyering, then I am pleased to recommend the ones I have listed in the SIDEBAR below.

Regardless of what you choose to read, reading allows you to better understand your world by allowing you to visit other people’s worlds.  The more you read the more readily you can use the language and ideas expressed by others to better express yourself.  The well-read lawyer is well-prepared to draft briefs that are well-written and make arguments that are well-spoken.  Well?  What are you waiting for?  As Socrates wrote in a book I haven’t read, “employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored so hard for.”  Or, as Dr. Seuss wrote in a book I have read, “the more that you read, the more things you will know.  The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” 

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SIDEBAR

Here is the very short list of lawyer books I have enjoyed.  I trust that you will enjoy them too but, if not, I hope you won’t do whatever my wife says I do to ruin them for your non-lawyer friends and family who might.

CLASSICS
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Atticus Finch is called upon to serve as the conscience of his community when he is appointed to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in a small depression-era town in south Alabama.
 
The Verdict by Barry Reed.  Attorney Frank Galvin is given his last best chance to take control of what little is left of his once brilliant legal career by taking on the powerful Archdiocese of Boston on behalf of his powerless client.
 
Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver (the pen name of Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker).  Attorney Paul Biegler comes out of semi-retirement after losing his bid for re-election as District Attorney in a small town in the Upper-Peninsula of Michigan to craft a defense for a man accused of killing a local innkeeper.
      
MODERN CLASSICS
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. Deputy District Attorney Rusty Sabich heads up, and then becomes the prime suspect in, the politically and personally charged investigation into the murder of colleague with whom he had an affair.
 
A Time To Kill by John Grisham.  Attorney Jake Brigance is required to confront a difficult mix of legal, moral, racial and cultural issues in his northern Mississippi town when he is hired by a black man to defend him for killing the white men who raped his daughter.
 
COMEDY CLASSICS
Rumpole of the Bailey by John Mortimor.  Barrister and self-described “Old Bailey Hack” Horace Rumpole uses his considerable wit and formidable wits to deal with his colleagues with whom he shares chambers, his wife (“She who must be obeyed”) with whom he shares a  “mansion flat”, and to provide zealous and hilarious representation for several generations of colorful “local villains” with whom he shares doubts about the impartiality of the London criminal courts.
 
Wilkes: His Life and Crimes by Winston Schoonover (the pen name of Charles Sevilla).  Gonzo criminal defense attorney John Wilkes defends those with enough money to afford him with great zest, craftiness and panache, but without any regard for the rules of evidence, ethics or decorum.
  
The Ehrengraf Defense by Lawrence Block.  Attorney Martin Ehrengraf is featured in eight short stories, akin to what you might expect to see on old episodes of The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in which he employs extremely unorthodox methods to earn the extremely high fees he charges but only collects when the client is set free by the authorities.
 
NON-FICTION CLASSICS
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi.  Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi chronicles the story behind the prosecution of Charles Manson and members of his “Family” for the infamous Tate/LaBianca murders in 1969. Please note that if after reading this book you find yourself thinking that it would be worthwhile to read anything/everything else Mr. Bugliosi wrote - I can assure you that it would not.
 
The Prosecution Responds: An O.J. Simpson Trial Prosecutor Reveals What Really Happened by Hank Goldberg.  Deputy District Attorney Hank Golberg gives a serious, compelling and (despite the title) objective analysis of the procedural, tactical and strategic decisions made by the prosecution team in The People v. O.J. Simpson, and how those decisions played out in court and through the media.