Books, Entertainment Law

An Entertainment Lawyer And A Novelist: An Interview With Robert Rotstein

Meet a successful entertainment lawyer who produces entertainment of his own -- by writing legal thrillers.

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In April, I had the privilege and pleasure of speaking at a wonderful event hosted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. I joined two other lawyer-writers, Robert Rotstein and Jonathan Shapiro, to talk about lawyering in fact and fiction. (You can watch the panel on YouTube, starting around the 2:26:00 mark.)

At the time of our Ninth Circuit event, Robert Rotstein was getting ready to release his latest novel, The Bomb Maker’s Son (affiliate link). After the book’s publication, Rotstein and I connected to talk about it and about his legal and literary practices more generally.

DL: Congratulations on the publication of The Bomb Maker’s Son? Can you tell us a bit about what the novel is about?

RR: The Bomb Maker’s Son is the third novel featuring attorney Parker Stern, once a “Top 5 trial lawyer under 40” who now experiences debilitating stage fright whenever he walks into a courtroom. In the novel, Ian Holzner, a fugitive from justice, shows up on Parker ’s doorstep, seeking representation. Holzner—better known as the Playa Delta Bomber—is about to be arrested for allegedly planting a bomb that killed four people in 1975. Parker turns down the case, until a startling revelation from Parker’s estranged mother all but forces him, against his better judgment, to change his mind. As media attention swirls, a bomb explodes and other violent acts occur, and it appears that Holzner is the mastermind. At great personal risk, Parker tries to uncover the truth and defend his client in the high-profile trial. In the process, he discovers long-hidden, painful realities about his family and his own past.

DL: You are a lawyer, like your protagonist, but your work seems quite different from Parker Stern’s. Can you tell us a little bit about your own legal career and current practice?

RR: I attended UCLA Law School and then clerked for the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy, at the time a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Since the late 1970s, I’ve focused on copyright, trademark, and media law. During my career, I’ve represented many writers, directors, producers, and performers, including Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, John Sayles, and most recently, writer-director James Cameron — along with all the major motion-picture studios and record companies. I’m currently a partner in the Los Angeles office of Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp LLP. Although Parker Stern has a general practice, he also has an entertainment litigation background: in Reckless Disregard, the second in the series, Parker defends a reclusive video-game designer in a libel suit brought by a powerful media mogul who’s accused of abducting a starlet who disappeared without a trace in the 1980s.

DL: Your practice is fascinating, but different in many ways from Parker’s. Have you had to do a lot of research in writing the Parker Stern novels? How do you go about imagining what it would be like to represent an accused bomber (assuming you haven’t done so yourself)?

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RR: The first Parker Stern novel, Corrupt Practices (affiliate link), and the third, The Bomb Maker’s Son, both involve criminal law, so I did a fair amount of research for both books. For The Bomb Maker’s Son, I looked at a number of sources to conceptualize Ian Holzner, the Playa Delta Bomber in the novel. I was able to locate some of the transcripts for the trial of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I also read a number of news articles, memoirs, and biographies of nineteen sixties and seventies radicals, as well as the communiques of the Weather Underground. And finally, because I came of age during the Vietnam War era, I knew several high school classmates who’d become radicalized and so drew on that knowledge as well.

DL: So both your legal work and your literary work involve a fair amount of research. How would you compare legal writing and fiction writing? Do you find one or the other to be more difficult?

RR: Each type of writing has its own challenges. I find legal writing more difficult in the sense that the stakes are higher—my clients’ interests are at risk, so what I write affects the real world. Fiction (and I hope this is true of mine) can entertain and edify, but any impact it has on others is indirect. That being said, legal writing often uses templates from previous cases that make the writing task easier. A fiction writer wants to avoid obvious templates and to express a story in a novel way.

There is one similarity, however: both legal writing and fiction writing seek to tell a story (and I don’t mean that lawyers make things up!). The best way to reveal the truth is to tell a story.

DL: There are so many lawyers out there who want to tell these stories, who are aspiring writers or novelists. What advice would you offer to them about how to follow in your footsteps?

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RR: My advice is to take advantage of what you’ve learned as a lawyer. About a third of the authors who write for my publisher, Seventh Street Books, are or have been attorneys. Contrary to popular belief, attorneys are well equipped to become fiction writers. Legal writing is collaborative — we show our drafts to colleagues and clients, who make edits in the ordinary course. For that reason, I’ve found that lawyers have less “author’s pride” than many writers, and that’s a good thing. It enables us to take edits in stride and to come up with a better product. Lawyers also work on deadline, which requires us to write even when we might not feel like it. I, personally, was finally able to write fiction when I approached writing a novel the same way I approached writing a legal brief — I gave myself a deadline, started drafting, and told myself that if the first draft didn’t come out as I’d hoped, the next draft would be better. That process was liberating.

DL: Congrats again on your latest book, and thanks for taking the time to share your insights!

The Bomb Maker’s Son [Amazon (affiliate link)]
Corrupt Practices [Amazon (affiliate link)]

Earlier: Thanks To The Ninth Circuit For A Supreme Event!

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