Another in a series on the interconnections between the craft of trial lawyering and the craft of writing.
Today's discussion: On how meeting conflicted and compromised people face-to-face in arduous circumstances gives a writer a leg up in portraying the human condition fully and authentically.
To the extent that anyone thinks of trial lawyering as a creative craft, they would naturally think of it as only being presented on the stage of a courtroom. That conception, as understandable as it may be, is as limited as believing that the art of painters is circumscribed by what in the end appears on their canvasses.
I was a violent crime prosecutor for more than 35 years. Over that time I sat down with hundreds of people across the full spectrum of life, and not just victims and witnesses, but defendants too —people charged with serious crimes who came into my office with their lawyers to try to trade their version of the truth for some measure of leniency from the system. They were looking to be what are called "cooperators," and that cooperation would come with significant risks, which they were willing to bear for fear of the alternative.
In the end, I didn't put many of those defendants on the witness stand. Some I didn't find believable in significant ways. Some wanted deals from the government that I couldn't endorse. The ones that I did call as witnesses acted admirably and honestly, and received due credit for bringing more culpable cohorts to justice.
But the bottom line is that all of those conversations with all of those defendants — whether I ultimately sponsored them as witnesses or I didn't — offered me a view of every aspect of human nature, from the very bad to the very good, that the everyday person never gets a chance to see. And all of those experiences are woven into everything I am as a fiction writer, trying to create authentic, full-bodied characters.
More soon on specifics.