I had a good experience last week at the Willamette Writers
meeting in Newport. The guest speaker was Philip Margolin, a best-selling
author who has written 30 books. He writes “legal thrillers’ not to be confused
with mysteries. He said when he started out, the term legal thrillers did not
really exist. If you had a lawyer taking on a murder case, the story was
usually classified as a murder mystery. Authors like John Grisham (and himself) turned legal thrillers into its own genre. Two of his stories have made it on screen, The Last
Innocent Man, and Gone but not Forgotten.
He graduated with his law degree from NYU Law School. He
said that he already had a job lined up when he graduated, that being, a law
clerk for a justice on the Oregon Court of Appeals. When I heard that, my ears
perked up and I went, “I wonder . . .”
The rest of his presentation was interesting. He went into
private practice. He loved Perry Mason when he was growing up, but he said
Perry Mason’s clients were always innocent. Margolin’s clients, not so much. He
went over the rather unorthodox way that he got into writing. It started out as
a hobby and things just sort of fell together for him. "So," he said, “I have no
great wisdom for you about how to get published.”
I enjoyed the talk and I thought if the opportunity arose,
I would like to talk to him about something. He signed a book and then the space opened up
around him, so I took my chance. I asked him when it was that he was law
clerking at the Oregon Court of Appeals. He told me he clerked for Justice
Schwab in 1970. I told him my father was a justice on the Court of Appeals
around that time. He asked me his name. I said Ed Branchfield. His eyes lit up
and he said, “Yes! I knew Ed. He was a great guy.” He respected him as a judge.
He remembered that my dad had to run for reelection and Mr. XXX ran against him
and beat him.
This has always been a bone of contention in my family. XXX
had a state-wide recognizable name as he was the former Attorney General and
had run for governor a few years before. He wanted to be on the court, but he
had no judicial experience, so he picked on the weakest candidate he could
find, my dad, who had little name recognition outside of Jackson County.
Everyone who knew anything about the race endorsed my dad, but that made little
difference; he won rather easily. XXX’s name was mud in my family, but then, honestly, perhaps that
was just sour grapes.
Philip Margolin told me that my dad’s law clerk refused to
clerk for XXX so he swapped places with Phili Margolis. So, then Margolis had to
clerk for XXX and he said he hated working for him. Said he was so dumb.
Okay, maybe my family is vindicated in our distaste
for Mr. XXX.
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