Good Thing I was a Lawyer First

By Lori B. Duff

I don’t believe in fate. To believe in fate requires me to believe that free will is an illusion, that our choices only serve something predetermined. Actions have consequences. 

Now that I’m in my mid-fifties, I’ve had a lot of time to make a lot of choices and suffer (or celebrate) the consequences of those choices. I’ve also learned that time shifts perspective. What seemed catastrophic in the moment turned out to be a blessing, and vice versa. As a result, I’m a much calmer fifty-four-year-old than I was a twenty-four-year-old. I know: give it time. You’ll probably change what you think.

Back in the day, the day being defined as the 1980s, I was your typical over-achiever. Pleasing authority figures was my ultimate goal for a variety of psychologically complex reasons not relevant to this discussion. I did well in school. I won writing awards. I won music competitions. I had strong pulls towards academics and the arts, all of which made for a groovy college application and got me into swanky schools.

My parents weren’t really sure what to do with me. They had been the popular kids in high school. (I think it is obvious from my above description that I was not.) Dad played football, Mom was a cheerleader. In their minds, if you did well in school, then you went to law school or med school. Anything else was a waste of potential. The arts were things you did for fun, not for a career.

So I went to law school. 

I kept scribbling stories in a notebook. I played in community orchestras and took drawing and pottery classes. I never completely detached from the arts, but it was a thing I did the way other people went to the movies.

The law wasn’t a bad fit for me. Being a trial attorney is a little bit like producing a show and performing on stage. You have to set the scene, make sure the story gets told, make sure the audience gets sucked in and buys your version of events. There’s high drama in trial work.  There’s a lot of creativity.

Somewhere in my forties, I became embarrassingly typical and felt the itch of a midlife crisis. The internet had been born in my lifetime, and blogging was blooming. I started there. Blogging turned into a column. My old habits turned back on and I started taking classes and joining groups. I learned craft from people who knew it better than me. My column turned into a book, then books. I started winning writing awards again. 

And all of a sudden, more than a decade has gone by since I first announced my mid-life crisis (though only five years have passed since I bought a yellow convertible Camaro.) I’ve gone from new member of groups to president of national organizations. I teach classes on craft as often as I attend them now. My little five-hundred word columns about real life have grown, and now I’ve written several 90,000 word novels.

And I’ll be honest. There are so many nights when I lay in bed and I wonder: why did it take me so long? All I want to do is write my stories. Writer’s block is not a problem for me. Finding time to get it all down is. I have a whole notebook full of jotted-down ideas I haven’t fleshed out yet because there are only so many hours in the day and I still practice law. A little. I’m starting to wean myself off. I no longer consider myself a trial attorney. That takes up too much energy and brain space. 

So when I’m spinning my stories, sometimes I spin the story of what would have happened if I’d been encouraged to pursue the things I loved as a career. What if I’d tried to be a classical musician? What if I’d tried to be a writer/editor/publisher? I don’t believe it was fate that led me to law school, I think it was my choices, my choices that were influenced by other people’s choices.

Well? What if?

I think about twenty-year-old me who had just graduated from college, thinking she had a fancy degree that meant something. What would I have written about then?

I don’t have any idea. Frankly, if I’d had an idea, a compelling one, I probably would have written it. I needed to have some life behind me first, some experiences to steal bits and bobs from. Twenty-year-old me said and did some really dumb and embarrassing things. I can’t imagine that anything that person would have written would have been any smarter or less embarrassing.

The writing and books I’ve been most successful with have been when I’ve written about the law. The law is a rich subject. Being a lawyer is a great way to learn about the human condition. I’ve never been divorced myself, but I’ve held the hands of hundreds of people while they went through it and learned the nitty gritty details probably their best friends don’t even know. I’ve waded through the aftermath of death with the complex interplay of family members. I’ve talked to crime victims and the perpetrators of crime. I know that there are at least three sides to every story and there’s rarely such a thing as the absolute truth. There’s only perspective.

The drama of life plays out in a courtroom.

I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t seen it for myself over three decades.

So do I regret my choices? Absolutely not. Without them, what interesting things would I possibly have to say?

—

Lori B. Duff is a lawyer, municipal court judge, and award-winning writer. An empty-nester, she lives in Loganville, Georgia, with her husband and rescue puppy.

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A gripping courtroom drama that explores the struggle between morality vs. professional obligation, Devil’s Defense will appeal to fans of female-lead courtroom dramas like The Good Wife.

Jessica Fischer wants nothing more than to build her law practice in small-town Ashton, Georgia. She’s well on her way when the local town hero, football coach Frank “Tripp” Wishingham III, hires her to represent him in a paternity suit. Coach is everything Jessica despises—arrogant, sexist, entitled—but it’s her job to make him look good in public. This is made doubly difficult when her burgeoning relationship with a local reporter gets in the way of telling the truth.

Are things as black and white as Jessica thinks? And can she find a way to succeed without compromising her own personal values—or her personal life?

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