bloggedy blog

:: Thursday, May 01, 2003 ::

A brief history of the legal thriller
"Whoever tells the best story, wins the case.” To many Americans, this modern maxim embodies the pivotal role of the lawyer: control of the narrative. Whether drafting a contract or laying out evidence in a courtroom, the lawyer's ability to manipulate language determines the outcome of the client's case. Many would argue that the law’s language, arcane procedures, rules and conventions are purposely made mysterious by its practitioners. What could be more natural than for lawyers and legal stories to have been instrumental in the creation of the mystery novel, and particularly, the subgenre legal thriller?

So begins a fascinating, informative and (despite the "brief" in the title) lengthy essay on the history of the legal thriller. It's written by Marlyn Robinson, a reference librarian at the University of Texas' Tarlton Law Library and creator of a fascinating website, the Law and Popular Culture Collection at Tarlton Law Library. Fans of legal thrillers could lose themselves for hours in this site. (I've already lost a good 45 minutes surfing through its online stuff. Check out lawyerly quotations from popular culture (a personal favorite is from Professor Kingsfield of the '70s TV series "The Paper Chase": You come in here with a head full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer), or the library's database of more than 600 law movies.

Site backed into from a link at BookFilter.

:: Andrew 08:47 + ::
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