What Law Students Can Learn from Reading Legal Thrillers

by Steven Woofter

I come from a paperback family. At holidays, all my relatives exchange the romance, western, spy, detective and historical novels they've accumulated and read since the last exchange. I fell into the family tradition, reading all my dad's war and spy novels in junior high before moving on to my aunts' vast collections of detective novels.

Over the last few years I'd kind of gotten out of the paperback habit. Working as a corporate drone with not enough to do required heavier reading at home in order to keep my brain from turning into porridge. When I started law school, though, I eased right back into the spy and detective novels and discovered the legal thriller beyond Grisham.

I need something to turn my brain off at night before I go to sleep and there's really nothing better than a mass market paperback for that. It's easier on the eyes than TV and there's a perception that reading is better than TV. An old friend of mine used to say that Grisham wrote books for people who'd rather be watching TV. There's probably some truth to that. Besides, it really doesn't take much longer to read The Runaway Jury than it does to sit through the movie.

The price of mass-market paperbacks at the supermarket are outrageous. $7.99, minimum, well beyond a law student's budget. Luckily, there's a Salvation Army a block from our house with a huge wall of used paperbacks for 25 ¢ apiece. So I began picking up a buck's worth legal/spy/detective novels every once in awhile and now I read one for a half-hour or so most nights before I go to sleep.

This past fall, a semester in which I took both Evidence and Criminal Procedure, I noticed something in a book I was reading, Offer of Proof, by Robert Heilbrun. The book, about a brilliant public defender in NYC who, like most characters in legal thrillers, goes over the edge in his quest for the truth, was full of references to the FRE and canonical Crim Pro case law.

How dare this writer insert real law into a fictional story about the law. It was like I was studying for my upcoming exams. A justification for wasting time reading this stuff, maybe? Sadly, the only other legal fiction writer I've discovered who likes to cite case law and evidence rules is John Lescroart, so I had to find other educational reasons for reading pulp fiction during the school year.

It wasn't too difficult.

Lesson 1: If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. This is something one can learn from the writings of John Grisham. From the evils of Big Law in The Firm to the depravity of mass tort lawyers in The King of Torts, Mr. Grisham warns the budding lawyer to not take the easy way to riches. You'll wind up in jail, broke, dead, or all of the above.

Lesson 2: Practicing criminal law is horribly dangerous. I know it wouldn't be a thriller if there wasn't some danger but I'd like to read a criminal thriller involving defending a DUI. Well, no I wouldn't, but Mary and Judy, the main protagonists in Lisa Scottline's novels have gotten shot or shot at so many times I can't believe they haven't joined a convent. I don't know if Scottoline wants to write nun thriller so that isn't an option, although David Foster Wallace, in the footnotes of Infinite Jest, created a fiction movie called Blood Sister: One Tough Nun about a crusading nun with a gun, so it is something of an untapped genre.

Lesson 3: Legal thrillers are a great way to learn about other cities. Like the best crime fiction by Lawrence Block, George Pelecanos, or James Ellroy, a good series of legal thrillers will immerse you in the city in which they are set. Scottoline's books are a nice introduction to the socio-economic, culture and history of Philadelphia and Lescroart does the same for San Francisco. One of the things I find annoying about Scott Turow, although I think his writing is probably the best of the genre, is that his stories are set in a fictional metropolis.

Lesson 4: Lawyers shouldn't write about sex. Most authors suggest that sex has taken place at some point but don't go into details. When I was 12 years old, that would have been disapppointing, but now, after reading a book by Robert K. Tanenbaum, I don't mind. Tanenbaum, a former NYC ADA and mayor of Beverly Hills, is guilty of the most horrific sexual metaphor I've ever read in a serious novel - "he sank into her like a pipe wrench sinking into a warm crock of chili."

There are, of course, a number of other valuable lessons for law students and lawyers to be found in supermarket paperbacks. I wonder what wisdom Evan has hiding in his unpublished novels.

About the Author: Steven Woofter is a 32-year old 2L at the University of Nebraska College of Law and the author of the weblog Half-Cocked.

Comments

[Abnu]

If a law student doesn't have time to read novels, can books still be thrillers? Apparently so.

[kristine]

I will never eat chili again. :::shudder:::

[David Giacalone]

Since student weblawgers seem to have endless amounts of spare time and love putting pixel to screen, I suggest they write rather than read crime novels. I've never met Joseph L. Giacalone, and don't know if he is a distant relative, but he has written a book meant to prepare those uninitiated to the world of cops and crime to write crime novels. You'll find Writing Crime New York Style fully described at Joe G's website. For extra credit, check out his Mr. Murder site, along with the mob's greatest hits.

p.s. I've never eaten chili with a wrench and do not plan to start any time soon.

[energy spatula]

I'm taking a seminar on this exact subject this quarter (Legal fiction)...it's fabulous...lots of great things going on!

[charlsie]

I have found that after exams I am incapacitated from reading anything that requires thought for a couple of weeks, and legal thrillers are just the ticket sometimes. Does Bleak House fall under "legal thriller?"

[narayan]

hi,
read ur not on legal thrillers- i agree, and i am including this note with credits attached to the new edition of my work A FICTION OF LAW: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO LEGAL THRILLERS.
NARAYAN
lawyer & the numero- uno legal thriller lover
sr. reviewer (legal thrillers) rebeccasreads.com

[Beldar]

Turrow's fictional city and county are Chicago and Cook County, thinly disguised. (Unless he's being pressed by a local judge who's concerned that his fictional city and county full of corrupt judges and bought-off politicians are Chicago and Cook County, thinly disguised, in which case they're entirely fictional.)