Turning Law into Literature: Why I Wrote My First Novel
Mark Twain once said, “Write what you know,” which might explain why my murder mystery novel takes place at a New York law firm. Friends jokingly ask me, “Have you not had enough of law after working with it your whole life? Don’t you want to write books about something else?
The truth is, turning my years of experience into literature gave me something special: a chance to reframe my experience. For years, I carried the stories of my time at prestigious firms in Manhattan: the long hours, the high-stakes cases, the betrayals, and the small victories that meant everything. I also carried the weight of being a woman in an environment built for men. Writing the novel became a way to give voice to those moments, to transform what I lived into a story that others could step inside.
I didn’t begin my career dreaming of becoming an author… or even working in corporate law. My undergraduate degree was in environmental engineering, and I entered law school with the hope of working in environmental advocacy. But the landscape shifted quickly, so jobs in that area dried up after political changes gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. With bills to pay and family responsibilities, I took a different path and entered patent law, landing in New York. That choice took me into boardrooms and courtrooms where women, among others, were rare, and rarely listened to. I was interrupted, dismissed, and often punished for mistakes I hadn’t made.
Several years after I began work at the firm, I was offered a wonderful new job at a major pharmaceutical company in New Jersey and I commenced commuting to and from New York City via rail. On my train rides to and from New York, I carried a legal pad, later a clunky laptop, and began sketching the story that would eventually become A WOMAN OF EXTRAORDINARY SKILL. At first, the novel centered on Murray, a male associate questioning his future. But the more I wrote, the clearer it became: the real story was Julia’s. She embodied the brilliance, resilience, and quiet fire I saw in myself and so many others at the firm.
Although it is not a memoir (no murders happened on my watch!), the novel draws from real textures of life in the 1980s legal world. I mused about what would have happened if the dysfunction of our daily lives had been extrapolated to its fullest extent. Julia’s frustrations, such as her ideas being stolen in meetings, her authority challenged, and her integrity tested, are all scenes that mirror experiences I and, no doubt, countless women endured. There were few women at our firm, but we all had similar experiences. And aspects of these experiences affected others as well: anyone who didn’t quite “fit in” to the desired stereotype, whether they were from different backgrounds than the partners or were of a different sexual orientation or simply didn’t project self-confidence.
For example, as in the book, it was easy for a partner to deflect blame for his own mistake onto Bob, nearly derailing his career. That scene was sparked by my own memory of carrying the burden of another lawyer’s error for years. Writing it into fiction allowed me to process the sting while also showing readers how such injustices unfold in real time.
Even years after I started practicing law, I would hear other pre-conceived notions about what women lawyers were or were not capable of: an attorney once expressed the opinion that “women lawyers are not good at client acquisition so it’s not worth trying to teach them. They’ll leave the firm eventually anyway…”. He was shocked when I suggested that perhaps he should reexamine that notion!
Writing A WOMAN OF EXTRAORDINARY SKILL helped heal the fissures created by these experiences, and I hope it will do the same for my colleagues as well!
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A Story Rescued From a Drawer
Life intervened, as it always does. The manuscript sat dormant for years, first as printed pages, then on a floppy disk in the back of a drawer. Between raising a son, being a supportive wife to my writer husband, taking care of my mother through illness, and building a demanding career, there was little time for fiction.
Then, many years later, something happened. The world slowed down, offices closed, and we were no longer allowed out; to worship, to go to the gym, or even to the grocery store. The COVID pandemic disrupted the whole world and threw us off our usual path. But for me, the stillness meant I could finally focus on the little, less immediate things. It gave me the push to do what I had been meaning to do for so long… I finally opened that drawer.
What I found surprised me: the story still pulsed with life. With encouragement from a local zoom-based writing group, I rewrote, restructured, and breathed fresh air into Julia’s journey. That “drawer novel” finally became a book.
A WOMAN OF EXTRAORDINARY SKILL isn’t just a tale of one woman in one law firm. It’s a mirror held up to any profession where women fight to be heard, recognized, and respected. It’s for every reader who has ever felt talked over in a meeting, dismissed for speaking up, or branded “bossy” or “difficult” for standing their ground.
But I didn’t just want to make a point about women in the workplace. Others who don’t exactly match the archetypal image of a “successful lawyer” have similar experiences. And I wanted to write a book full of page-turning legal drama, ambition, power struggles, betrayal, and resilience. And I wanted Julia’s fight to claim her place to be as personal as it is universally relatable.
If you’ve ever wondered what really goes on behind the polished walls of a Manhattan law firm, or if you’ve ever fought to be taken seriously in your own career, you’ll see yourself in Julia’s story.
