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Jim Grippando
Lawyer Writes Pardon
(Originally published in Pinellas County Review,
January 1995)
By Bob Andelman
Lawyers. Write one story for the college law
review and for the rest of their careers they plan to write the
Great American Novel. And for every one who finally gives up
that dream, along comes a Scott Turow or John Grisham to inspire
another generation of dreamers.
For Miami attorney James Grippando, author
of the new bestseller, The Pardon (HarperCollins), it
was a combination of Turow's best-selling novel Presumed Innocent,
and the popularity of NBC-TV's L.A. Law that in September
1988 convinced him to devote most nights and weekends to writing
his first novel, The Dupree Conspiracy a murder mystery
about a wealthy Palm Beach family.
"I always loved to write," Grippando
said in a telephone interview. "But the legal writing I
had done was very esoteric stuff. My first publication was about
condominium rule-making. Not the kind of stuff people giggle
about at cocktail parties."
Three years later, the Steel Hector &
Davis litigator produced a monstrous first effort, 1,200 pages
(275,000 words!) long. Knowing he'd need an agent to sell it,
he started at the top, going right to representatives for Grisham
and Robert Ludlum. Both encouraged him, but fretted that the
book was way too long. The agent he finally signed with agreed
and they spent the next year cutting the book in half before
sending it to prospective publishers.
Don't look for The Dupree Conspiracy
on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. Nobody bought it.
But Grippando's agent felt confident his client
could write and told him to get back to work and start a new
book. Easy for him to say. "I had no ideas," Grippando
recalled. "I wasn't even a published author and I had writer's
block."
Complicating matters, Grippando had spent
four years writing in secrecy. "I had lived by two rules.
Number one, I kept my writing secret. I wanted people to still
treat me seriously. I wasn't going to quit my job; I love the
law. The other rule was, I was going to keep it fun. But at this
point, it wasn't fun," he said.
A chance encounter with the law helped Grippando
break through.
"I was up late one evening, till 1 a.m.,
frustrated," he said. "I went for a walk around the
block. Out of the blue, this cop car pulls up onto the sidewalk
and blocks my path. The cop gets out of the car and demands to
know where I'm going. The lawyer in me thought, 'It's none of
your damn business,' but I actually said, 'I live around here.'
He said, 'Prove it. Do you have any identification?' I didn't.
I was in jogging shorts and a T-shirt. He told me they had a
report of a peeping tom. He called into the dispatcher for the
description and it fit me perfectly: Mid-30s, eyes, hair, white
T-shirt, blue shorts.
"While I listened to this I was thinking,
'I'm going to wind up in jail! I work for a prestigious law firm.
Janet Reno was a partner! A past-president of the ABA was from
my firm. And Jim Grippando, peeping Tom!
"Finally, the dispatcher added ' . .
. and a mustache.' "
Grippando, who has no mustache and was not
carrying a razor, was released. He ran home and immediately began
writing The Pardon, the story of an innocent man arrested
and accused of something he didn't do.
His second book was unlike his first in every
respect. First of all, it only took seven months to write. And
this time, his agent sold it - in two weeks, for a six-figure
advance. Since then, everything has broken Grippando's way: The
Pardon, published September 14, 1994, and now in its second
hardcover printing, has 50,000 copies in print. People
magazine raved. A paperback version is due this summer. It is
an alternate selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book
Club and the Mystery Guild. Foreign rights have sold for French,
Korean and Dutch versions. Even the audiocassette, read by actor
John Rubenstein, is a bestseller.
"It's been a roller coaster," he
said. "The highs have been higher than I expected and the
lows have been lower. The most gratifying thing has been getting
letters from strangers all across the country saying they read
it, they loved it. Because as much as your friends say they love
it, you want to know what strangers think."
(On Tuesday, January 10, Grippando will be
the featured speaker at the Tampa Bay Literary Society's dinner/literary
discussion at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. Dinner is $35
and starts at 6 p.m.; it includes a copy of The Pardon,
the discussion and a book signing. Attending the discussion only
costs $15, but does not include a book. For more information,
call Dan Alpert, 894-7273.)
All of the hubbub about his writing career
didn't affect his first love, law, until after The Pardon
was published.
"I was able to maintain a full-time practice
writing the book but promoting the book made it difficult to
maintain a practice," he said. As a result, he has reduced
his time practicing law to 60 percent of what it once was. "That's
about the pace I will continue. Granted, I work for a firm where
lawyers work pretty hard. So 60 percent of that is still a significant
practice."
He'll also continuing chairing the 170-lawyer
firm's summer associate program, overseeing student lawyers during
their try-outs with Hector, Steel & Davis.
The lawyer in The Pardon, Jack Swyteck,
defends gruesome criminals. Grippando based the character and
his client on his experiences as a clerk for Judge Tom Clark,
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. "A
good part of my practice there was handling last-minute stays
of execution," he said. "Most of the time, guilt or
innocence wasn't a factor. The guy did it."
His practice at Steel Hector & Davis,
by contrast, is less than 5 percent criminal, and of that, most
is white-collar crime. Among his current cases, Grippando represents
TicketMaster in a class-action suit brought by consumers claiming
the company charges too much for its service charges on concerts
and sporting events.
Grippando vows he'll follow in Scott Turow's
footsteps, both writing novels and practicing law - even though
writing pays more. "The days I've stayed home and done nothing
but write," he said, "I've found myself calling the
office at 2 p.m. to have someone to talk to."
The success of The Pardon may one day
bring new interest to Grippando's first book, The Dupree Conspiracy.
At least he hopes so. "To this day, some people think it's
a better book," he said. "We're hoping some day that
one will sell."
Not that he has to wait that long to sell
another book. HarperCollins, which published The Pardon,
is currently considering the outline for Grippando's next book.
He expects to know their decision by mid-January.
Incidentally, he did finally tell his partners
at Steel Hector & Davis about his moonlighting. "I've
assured everyone at the firm that they're not in the book,"
he said. "But I told them to watch themselves or they be
hatchet murderers or prostitutes in my next one."
LAWYER PROFILE
Name: James Grippando
Position: Partner, Steel Hector & Davis, Miami
Birthplace/date: Waukegan, IL; Jan. 27, 1958
Marital Status: Married Tiffany Russell, general manager
of Lord & Taylor in Boca Raton, April 1994. "She's the
reason I'm one of the better dressed lawyers at my firm."
Pre-Law: University of Florida, B.A. in political science,
1980; University of Florida Law School, 1982
First Law Job: Clerked for federal judge Tom Clark, U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Atlanta.
Why I Became a Lawyer: "I've always loved history.
Very early in life, I saw that most prominent figures in American
history were lawyers. The more I looked into it, the more the
whole discipline interested me. You can get a whole history of
the country by reading constitutional law cases."
Biggest Victory: "We made law in Arthur Gaskins
v. Cargill. That 1989 case started with chicken weight falsification
charges against Cargill (Baldree v. Cargill). But we alleged
that in retaliation for filing the case, Cargill terminated Arthur
Gaskins' contract to grow poultry. Gaskins, at the time, was
president of the Northeast Florida Broiler Growers Association.
There had never been a case where a chicken processor had been
forced to reinstate a grower. It radically changed the way everyone
in that industry conducted their business. All the processors
in the industry - Perdue, Tyson and so on - always treated their
growers as if their relationship was terminable at will. This
case showed it was not."
Biggest Disappointment: "The number of lawyers who
come up to me and say, 'You lucky S.O.B., now you don't have
to practice law any more.' It's driven home for me how widespread
the dissatisfaction with the law is for so many lawyers."
Lawyer Most Admired: Bill Killian, senior litigator, Steel
Hector & Davis. "He represents everything that the profession
of law - as opposed to the business of law - should be."
Favorite Law-related Book: To Kill a Mockingbird
Favorite Non-law book: Bonfire of the Vanities
by Tom Wolfe
end
©2000,
All rights reserved. No portion may be reproduced without the
express written permission of the author.
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