SEND IN THE STANDARD “RICH AND FAMOUS” CONTRACT: Ever since Sonny Mehta awarded Yale law professor Stephen Carter a multi-million dollar contract to produce two novels, law professors cum novelists everywhere have seem to have emerged. Kim Roosevelt, Paul Goldstein and Jed Rubenfeld have followed Professor Carter in writing very interesting novels. This summer, I read Roosevelt’s, In the Shadow of the Law and Goldstein’s Errors and Omissions. Rubenfeld’s novel, The Interpretation of Murder, will be released in September. So have the publishers received value for the product? I can say that both are excellent books. What follows are a couple of mini-reviews of both.

Professor Roosevelt’s novel features an ensemble cast of lawyers at a big D.C. firm, each of whom seem unhappy in a distinct way (ala Tolstoy’s quip in Anna Karenina that all unhappy families are uniquely unhappy). The two main subplots involve the firm’s representation of a chemical company whose plant explosion killed a number of workers and a young associate’s representation of a pro bono death penalty client whose guilt seems undeniable, but whose conviction seems not quite right. It evoked for me the insecurity and ennui of working at a large law firm, right out of law school, with little clue whether or to what extent one was being a good lawyer or engaging in malpractice on a day-to-day basis. The characters, including one supremely creepy individual who regularly reads books on how to pick up women, are well drawn, and the story is well-paced and suspenseful. The novel is also laced with profound ethical dilemmas that regularly face lawyers; for that reason, I’m going to use it in my Professional Responsibility class in the fall. (Professor Roosevelt is also a serious constitutional scholar, whose work I admire, and who has a book on Supreme Court decisonmaking forthcoming from Yale University Press this fall. He is truly a force of nature.)

Professor Goldstein is another distinguished law professor who has written a great legal thriller featuring a principled, down-and-out lawyer named Michael Seeley, who battles alcoholism while trying to track down the elusive true author of a screenplay that became an extremely valuable film company franchise. The idea of an heroic intellectual property lawyer may seem implausible to some, but it works in the context of Goldstein’s novel. Seeley feels real, and one both cringes at the depth of his lows (appearing wasted before a New York trial court judge) and roots for him as he tries to maintain his sobriety and find love with a Marxist film professor who is also involved in the hunt for the true author of the Spykiller script. The novel is deftly plotted, the pacing is swift, and the story coherent. As with Professor Roosevelt’s book, there are some knotty moral dilemmas that are presented to the reader and Goldstein offers no comfortable resolution. Errors and Omissions, too, I think could be an interesting vehicle to get law students to talk about legal ethics issues.