About Paul Levine’s Legal Thrillers – Musicians, Mobsters & Murders
Paul Levine worked as a newspaper reporter, a law professor and a trial lawyer before becoming a bestselling author of legal thrillers. Paul claims that writing fiction comes naturally: he told whoppers for many years in his legal briefs. His books have been translated into 23 languages, none of which he can read.
Prior to attending law school, Paul was a reporter for The Miami Herald, assigned to the criminal justice beat. He interviewed mobster Meyer Lansky during one trial and covered the “lewd and lascivious conduct” prosecution of Jim Morrison of “The Doors” in another. Musicians, mobsters, and murders…talk about legal thrillers! As a trial lawyer, Paul served as a legal commentator for two Miami television stations and created “You & the Law,” which was broadcast nationally. He also taught communications law at the University of Miami School of Law.
Paul says he enjoys writing more than lawyering because he no longer has to keep time sheets (“renting out my life by the quarter-hour”) and gets to work in his underwear. For 13 years, he lived in the hills of Southern California, which he swears were populated by rattlesnakes and coyotes, and those were just the Hollywood agents. Now, he resides in Miami, where he says “the mosquitoes are biting, but the fish ain’t.”
The Making of a Legal Thriller Author
Paul is a graduate of Penn State University where he majored in journalism and the University of Miami Law School where he claims to have majored in the swimming pool. Still, something must have sunk in, as he and a teammate won the national moot court championship. Graduating cum laude, Paul also was an editor of the Law Review. He is the recipient of Penn State’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and has served as an Alumni Fellow in the university’s College of Communications.
Paul was a trial lawyer with the mammoth international law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he did not even pretend to know all his partners’ names. He specialized in “complex litigation,” a fancy term meaning that the cases had so much paperwork no one could lift it all, much less read it. Legal thrillers? Not exactly. Paul tried hundreds of cases and handled appeals at every level, including the Supreme Court. Along the way, he filed expense accounts nearly as creative as his legal briefs.
Paul Goes Hollywood!
At the advanced age of 51, Paul headed to Hollywood and a mini-career as a television writer.
“Before I traveled west,” he says, “I thought Hollywood writers rolled into work around 11 a.m., scribbled for a couple hours, drank their lunch at Musso & Frank’s, then cracked wise with starlets the rest of the day. Like Humphrey Bogart, who came to Casablanca for the waters, I was misinformed.”
Paul wrote more than 20 episodes of the CBS drama JAG, which took place, in part, in military courtrooms. That’s right. Legal thrillers with the lawyers in uniform. Writing for JAG also gave Paul the opportunity to steer a nuclear submarine and land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, all without endangering national security.
Inspired by his book IMPACT, Paul teamed up with Don Bellisario to create FIRST MONDAY, a Supreme Court drama starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. Sadly, the CBS show was canceled after one season, despite being a hit with disbarred lawyers, disgruntled litigants, and a demographic Paul describes as “between Medicare and the mortuary.”
Paul’s Crime Novels
Drawing on his extensive legal experience and vivid imagination, Paul crafts legal thrillers that have been keeping readers awake at night for more than 20 years. Ten novels form the “Jake Lassiter” series, tales of a former Miami Dolphins linebacker turned hard-boiled lawyer with a tender heart. Four novels comprise the “Solomon vs. Lord” series, in which squabbling Miami lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord battle daily in the courtroom and occasionally the bedroom.
Paul won the John D. MacDonald Florida Fiction Award for his “Jake Lassiter” legal thrillers and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller Writers and James Thurber awards for the “Solomon vs. Lord” novels.
The books have drawn considerable critical praise, though Paul doesn’t always agree with the reviews. Armchair Detective termed the Lassiter series “twice as good as John Grisham and Scott Turow and four times the fun.” In rebuttal, Paul noted that Turow plays in a rock band. “He’s way more fun than I am.”