Justin Peacock is living the dream. The lawyer-turned-successful-writer dream, that is.

His first novel, A Cure for Night, got rave reviews. The Washington Post called it “terrific.” The New York Times praised Peacock for forgoing “the flashier precincts of John Grisham, where all is conspiracy and the legalese is leavened with bombs and gunplay, and head[ing] toward Scott Turow country, where characters get enmeshed in the murky, moral corners of the actual law.” The Mystery Writers of America recently nominated Peacock for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel.

After all the accolades, Peacock, 38, quit his litigation job at Patterson Belknap last year to concentrate full-time on writing. We caught up with him at Ozzie’s Coffeehouse in Brooklyn on a rainy Wednesday afternoon this week. Read our interview on making the transition from law to writing, after the jump.

Tim Green is a lawyer, bestselling author, and former NFL player. His forthcoming legal thriller is called Above the Law, which meant ATL had to sit down with him for an interview.

We remembered Green from his playing days with the Atlanta Falcons. Since we don’t know many linebacker lawyers, we had to know why Green decided to go to law school in the first place:

I was an English major in college and I love to read. I love to write….

I didn’t want to leave the NFL as an ex-NFL player with an English degree. I thought, what if I got a law degree? I was also also attracted to the notion of competition in the court, as a trial lawyer. I thought I’d match my wits and strategy and presentation against others. I always thought that would be exciting and fun.

Green graduated from Syracuse University College of Law in 1994. But he didn’t stop playing in the NFL until 1993. Put the two together and you come to the shocking conclusion that Green was earning his law degree while playing professional football:

I enjoyed it. I liked being at school. I liked the dichotomy of spending half of my year immersed in a rough physical world, and spending the other half of my year with people who were thoughtful, intelligent, and well read.

After the jump, we learn that Above the Law is a story about a lawyer Green believes is inside most attorneys.

John Grisham sat down with us this morning for an exclusive blog interview to discuss his new book, The Associate. The book’s main character, Kyle McAvoy, is a Biglaw associate with a mysterious past and intriguing future.

In his previous books, Grisham has explored emotional and ethical costs of practicing the law in various forms. But his latest book takes dead aim at the life, and lifestyle, of junior associates at top Manhattan law firms.

A lot of Kyle McAvoy’s Biglaw experience will ring true to most readers of Above the Law. We found out that Grisham’s depictions of Biglaw life are so accurate because typical associates told him the truth:

I found some wonderful blogs where associates post anonymously their stories. Beautiful stories….

But my best research was done by a research assistant that spent one year in the law…. He knew a ton of lawyers in the big law firms in New York. He told them up front what he was doing [researching for Grisham’s new book] and that their stories would be kept anonymous, and they just unloaded on him…. Most of it went into the book.

The book contains scenes that are easily recognizable to most Biglaw associates, from the mind-numbing experience of document review, to the attorney who literally passes out due to exhaustion.

But we wanted to know if Grisham modeled the book’s central firm, Scully & Pershing, on any individual real-life firm. Grisham said that he unequivocally did not:

I was prepared to go to a big law firm and get inside and walk around and kick the tires. But I didn’t want to do that because I knew the portrayal would be unflattering and I didn’t want to embarrass any particular firm.

In fact, Grisham thought about changing the name of the fictional Scully to avoid any possibility of confusion with Skadden.

Why is the take on life in Biglaw so “unflattering”? Grisham explains that the wasted potential he explores in The Associate mirrors what he sees in the corridors of the nation’s top law firms.

More details, after the jump.