Law Office Management
Sep. 2, 2010
Childhood Dreams
When I worked on my novel, I felt I was exercising a completely different set of muscles than those I used every day in my law practice.
I love practicing law, but like a lot of attorneys, I didn't start out planning to enter the legal profession?at least not when I was ten. At that age I dreamed of becoming a writer. In fact, I recently reconnected with a childhood friend of mine named Hugh who vividly remembers that back in my hometown of Kannapolis, North Carolina, I stood out among the neighborhood kids because my prize possession was a Smith Corona typewriter I had badgered my parents into buying for me. Now, at age 50 and two decades into my legal career, I'm finally getting reacquainted with my ten-year-old self. My debut legal thriller, The Insider, was published in May by Berkley Books as a mass-market paperback. The book tells the story of Will Connelly, a corporate attorney in a big San Francisco law firm who is on the verge of making partner. Will thinks that becoming a partner will solve all of his problems, but in reality his troubles are only beginning. The week after he is elevated to partner and takes over a major technology company merger, Will becomes the prime suspect in a colleague's murder and an unwilling participant in a complex criminal scheme that involves the Russian mob, insider trading, and a secret government domestic-surveillance program. I wrote the first pages of The Insider in a novel-writing workshop offered by the UC Berkeley Extension program in 2002. For three hours every Tuesday night for six weeks I sat at a cramped desk in a nondescript classroom in San Francisco and presented up to 20 pages for critique. Like most lawyers, I learned long ago how to accept criticism, but I found myself surprisingly anxious while awaiting the verdict from my classmates each week. In some ways my fiction was more personal and revealing than any memorandum or letter that I had written as a lawyer. The writing class comprised a diverse group. One thing that immediately stood out was that old verity about how autobiographical most first attempts at fiction are. For example, the journalist in our group was writing a thriller about an investigative journalist. An editor at a women's magazine was writing a story about office politics at a women's magazine. And, being a lawyer, it probably came as no surprise to anyone in the class that I was writing a legal thriller. The workshop instructor gave me both an appreciation of how much work was involved in writing a publishable novel and just enough encouragement to keep me writing in earnest. During the last session, my journalist classmate said that he would keep an eye out for my book on Amazon. He and I had a very long wait?eight years, to be exact. During that time, my writing provided a welcome break from my legal practice, which focuses on privacy, security, and health care issues. Writing was a little like going to the gym: When I woke up early to work on my novel, I felt that I was exercising a completely different set of muscles than those I used every day in my practice. Writing also led me to a new circle of friends. As I struggled through revision after revision of my manuscript, I participated in a few writing groups and developed a support group of writer friends who were very different from my lawyer friends. After my book was released I heard from Hugh, whom I hadn't seen in nearly 40 years. He had found me on CrimeSpace, a social networking website for crime and mystery fans and writers. Hugh reminded me that there were only two things that I ever consistently wanted as a boy: to write a novel, and to see the Minnesota Vikings win a Super Bowl. Now I finally have one novel under my belt, and I'm still not giving up on the Vikings. Reece Hirsch is a partner in the San Francisco office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and author of The Insider.
Kari Santos
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