Lawyer-cum-writers (1 Viewer)

[Frigid]

thought this article might interest some of you who want an alternative law career

When the pen proves mightier

What is it about law that turns so many people into writers? Brigid Delaney takes up the case.

Think of a lawyer-turned-writer and John Grisham springs to mind. Yet Australian bookshelves, TV screens and theatre stages are clogged with the works of lawyers who seem to do everything but practise law.

They are obviously not leaving law for great money and job security, but that hasn't stopped the exodus.

Tony Wilson left Minters to join ABC's Race Around the World and later penned a novel, The Player. Julian Morrow left Blake Dawson Waldron to pursue satire writing with The Chaser. Victorian author Kerry Greenwood gave up full-time work as a criminal lawyer for a one-day-a-week job so she could devote herself to penning novels.

Some lawyers have successfully combined legal practice with writing. Elliot Perlman, author of Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity, also is a barrister in Melbourne.

At the bar in Sydney is Richard Beasley, author of Hell Has Harbour Views, the too-close-for-comfort look at life in a big firm that aired on ABC TV.

The author of Butterfly Song, Terri Janke, has her own firm in Sydney specialising in copyright law. Playwright Tony Laumberg has a litigation and conveyancing practice in Bondi, juggling it with writing and producing theatre.

Other lawyers-turned-writers include James Bradley, Georgia Blain, Anna Funder and Julia Leigh. Lawyers-turned-comedians include Wilson (who hosts the breakfast show on Melbourne's Triple R) and Morrow, James O'Loghlin, Shaun Micallef, Triple J's Charlie Pickering, Steve Vizard, Libbi Gore and The Panel's Santo Cilauro.

Former ABC Media Watch hosts David Marr, Liz Jackson, Stuart Littlemore and Richard Ackland all worked as lawyers.

So why do so many lawyers turn to writing? Greenwood reckons that some law can be "so sodding boring that the lawyer must find some distraction from the minor subsections of the Land Tax Act or gnaw their own leg off."

Wilson, 32, also blames boredom. "I found the case-by-case reading of law quite boring - often badly expressed and a waste of time. I practised because I was on the conveyor belt and it's very hard to get off the conveyor belt once you are on it."

Wilson did his articles at Minter Ellison, where highlights included a "big franchise case for Roger David [menswear], and banking and finance where I rewrote Minter's loan documents to make them consumer credit code-compliant."

Rewriting the loan documents was the final nail in the coffin for Wilson's legal career. He applied for Race Around the World, and never went back. But he wonders whether he might have stayed if he had been in a more interesting practice group.

Morrow, 31, formed The Chaser after university, while working full-time in Blake's industrial relations law group.

When his Chaser commitments escalated he "took the benefit of Blake's flirtation with flexible work policies" and worked one day a week for a year. He spent the other four days a week working on The Chaser, before giving law away altogether.

"The grind of legal practice and the amount of paper pushing and procedure and workload is not something that I lie awake reminiscing about," he says.

But both Morrow and Wilson are grateful for their experience from law. Morrow takes care of The Chaser's legal issues ("which keeps me quite busy"), and says he applies the skills and practices learnt at Blakes in running The Chaser as a company. "And, indeed, quite a lot of the stationery I got from Blakes."

Wilson says, "Six-minute units" - the billing structure for lawyers - "ruin people's lives", but admits law offers great discipline for the often unstructured life of a writer.

"The law's obsession with output teaches you to be productive. There are better writers out there than me who never finish their novels. Law taught me accountability and hard work.

"It's also why I won Race Around the World. I could work for longer than the other racers because I was used to it."

Both lawyers and writers use language as a tool, which can determine success or failure.

"Sometimes your job as a lawyer is to defend your client's interest by asserting that words don't mean what they patently do. It attunes you to the way language works and can be made to work, which strikes me as quite consistent with being a comedian," says Morrow.

Greenwood agrees: "In my case, it is that study of the law teaches the lawyer about how important words are. You can't get through a law course without knowing that one word can change the outcome of a case and the fate of everyone in it. Or that there is a difference between warranty and guarantee, even though they are the same word."

Greenwood uses her one day a week as a lawyer as a reality check. "My Magistrates Court day is my holiday from unreason. Writers can easily fall in love with the pretty landscapes behind their eyes and never interact with the real world. One day's dose of the real world is salutary for me and useful for my clients.

"I go back into fantasy land with a proper sense of my own unimportance and they stay out of jail. Mostly."

 

[MoonlightSonata]

I intend to do that one day, in semi-retirement or some such thing

I wanted to be a writer since like year 1

 

[spell check]

yeah i stand by shaun micallef as the ultimate law role model