I am an experienced trial lawyer based in Charlotte. This is my personal blog. It is mostly about the study of “Law and Literature.” If you’re looking to see what I am about professionally, here is my law firm bio.
Over the years, I have formally studied both law and literature, taking a Bachelor’s in English and American Literature from Brown in 1998, and both a law degree and Master’s in English from Duke in 2001. For several years, as an adjunct professor, I taught a law school course about law and literature (in addition to teaching courses in white collar criminal law and trial practice).
But mostly what I’ve done for the past twenty years is practice law. And I have loved it. When I was in college, my mentor (who was an excellent English professor) told me that I would be unhappy if I became a lawyer. He said: “You will feel as if you are living two lives.”
But that has not been my experience at all.
For one thing, as a lawyer I have met and helped more characters, in more odd and extreme situations, than any English professor could hope to read about in all the creative novels they could get around to reading.
And I have been able to help many people, in a very direct way and while they are facing their worst fears and life challenges. Instead of reading novels or even writing them, I have been in the center of many stories — or at least met and learned from the protagonists (and supporting casts).
Law is the best career a caring and thoughtful person could have. I hope to be doing it for another three decades, and I hope nobody in my professional life will hold this blog against me as too personal or frivolous. And no, the reference to “professional life” in the preceding sentence does not mean that my professor was right and does not suggest an unpleasant existential dichotomy. I promise: it is not that I have too much free time. It is that I care how I spend that time. Writing this during the small part of my life that is not devoted to law or family means more to me than looking at television or other people’s recipes or subsequent suggestions for weight loss on social media.
Although I love the law, just as much I will always love books. Reading them. Interpreting them. Trying to see what they reveal about their authors’ vision of life, history, and philosophy. Learning how to write better — as a lawyer and otherwise — from them. I love literature. Seeing how the texts can make me a better lawyer, whether through improving my comprehension and writing skills, or by helping me understand how different people think. Examining how books and other writing can serve as a subtle (or blunt) tool for intellectual rebellion in these unprecedented political and social times.
And, just the same way, I love writing. In all styles. Not just the art of legal writing — and we will discuss that here — but any kind of writing. How can we do it best (or, to refine that, most meaningfully for each particular situation)? We will see.
For the most part, this blog is my humble “free time” offering to the field of “Law and Literature.” We will talk at length about what that field is, how it works, what it can do, and whether it matters.
I can be contacted through my law firm website.
Soon, this blog will have a way you can sign up to get updates from me, and will have a lot of content explaining what “Law and Literature” is.
In the meantime, if you want updates while I learn how to add a form that will let you “subscribe” to this blog, follow me on Instagram. Or, obviously, read this blog from time to time.
And for initial background on Law and Literature, here is a syllabus from a law school course I taught long ago, and here is a PowerPoint introducing the field (as I see it).
Thanks for looking at the blog.
Will Terpening, Charlotte, March 2025.