The premise of this seminar is that lawyers who have become novelists may be able to teach us something about both writing and law. Students will read the work of writers like Stephen Carter, Bernard Schlink, Marianne Wesson, Scott Turow, John Grisham, Eric Segal, Henry James, Robert Traver, Louis Auchincloss, Vincent Bugliosi, or other suitable fiction by a lawyer. Each student will write a paper about the work of one or more writers, focusing on such themes as the writer's ideas about law, the role of law in the plot, or the influence of legal reasoning on the writer's world view. Roughly half of the seminar meetings will be devoted to development of the student's own writing skills. The remaining meetings will be devoted to discussion of the student papers.
Anderson, David A.